Published by Guest Editions, Venezuelan Youth gathers photographs that Silvana Trevale shot between 2016 and 2025, a portrait of a multifaceted country through the honesty and directness that only children and adolescents possess.
Having left her country of origin at a young age, Trevale sees this project as both a tribute and an act of understanding it beyond the mainstream narrative of misery and hardship. Throughout the years, the photographer spent time with the subjects she portrayed, building trust and long-term relationships with them. Confronted with harsh life conditions such as extreme food and medicine shortages, causing many deaths around them, Venezuelan children sway from naivety to extreme awareness, leading to a stoic attitude that we’re more used to encountering in adults.
Although Venezuelan Youth is a project driven by Trevale’s nostalgia for her homeland and by the anger and sadness she feels about the difficulties her people face in her home country, her work transforms these negative feelings into a strength that enables her to interpret reality with hope, understanding, and joy.
Pillar of the PhotoVogue community, Silvana Trevale discusses her project and the process behind it.
Comunión, 2023 © Silvana Trevale. Courtesy Guest Editions© Silvana Trevale 2025
How do you find balance in portraying youth between lightness and the harshness of the conditions they’re exposed to from an early age?
Hopefulness and the faith of a better future for themselves and for Venezuela shaped a lot of the narrative, as I approached this project through the youth and through their eyes, a mix of innocence, of hoping that everything will be better, but also their strength in continuing to remain hopeful in the reality they’re in. In many situations, their lives would be very complex, but when I spoke to them, you could still perceive that innocence and joy alive, even though they face really harsh times.
Isaac and Yonaiker, 2021 © Silvana Trevale. Courtesy Guest Editions© Silvana Trevale 2025
