Musuk Nolte, Ashaninkas, The Ovayerii © Musuk Nolte / National Geographic Society

The Bronx Documentary Center (BDC) will hold its 6th annual Latin American Foto Festival (LAFF) from July 13–30, featuring large-scale photographs by both emerging and established, award-winning photographers, with their work displayed throughout the South Bronx’s Melrose neighborhood. The Festival will include works from Bolivia, Colombia, Chile, Cuba, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela – photographs representing long-term projects on missing persons; femicides; indigenous people’s rights; trans rights; youth exodus; Venezuela through young girls’ eyes; women soccer fans, and Latino and Caribbean contributions to Hip Hop culture. As part of the Festival, the BDC will hold in-person workshops, tours, panel discussions, and other community events.

Musuk Nolte, Ashaninkas, Franz Sibil, 13, plays with the remains of a tricycle © Musuk Nolte / National Geographic Society

Exhibitions:

Ashaninkas, Musuk Nolte
Perú
The majority of the Ashaninka inhabit the higher sections of the rainforest of Peru, with smaller numbers living in Brazil as well. Their story is a tale of constant struggle to defend their territory and their way of life. The people, landscapes and scenes documented by this project tell stories of adversity, courage, wisdom and healing.Their experiences underscore the inseparable relationship between oral memory, history, territory, health and the power of indigenous populations.

Natalia Favre, The Weight Of Absence And The Cuban Youth Exodus, Rayko kisses his mother’s forehead at her home in the Vedado neighborhood. © Natalia Favre

Natalia Favre, The Weight Of Absence And The Cuban Youth Exodus, Alexander listens to music lying on his bed at his great aunt’s house in Havana, Cuba, on August 5, 2022. © Natalia Favre

The Weight Of Absence And The Cuban Youth Exodus, Natalia Favre 
Cuba
The photographer Natalia Favre notes that “Cuba is experiencing a mass exodus. As a photographer based between Argentina and Cuba, every time I return to the island, more and more friends have left. A political and economic crisis further worsened by the impact of Covid has left many Cubans feeling they have no option but to leave their homeland.” For the last three years Favre has been focusing her work on the effects in Cuba of this emigration crisis.

Nicole Kramm Caifal, The Third Feminist Wave In Chile © Nicole Kramm Caifal

Nicole Kramm Caifal, The Third Feminist Wave In Chile © Nicole Kramm Caifal

The Third Feminist Wave In Chile, Nicole Kramm Caifal 
Chile
Feminist demonstrations in Chile in the last 5 years came to be known as “the third feminist wave” or the “Chilean feminist revolt”, as they demanded the end of machismo and gender inequality. The international movements “Ni una menos” and “Me Too” also reached Chile and with increasing revelations about gender violence in their country, millions of Chilean women mobilized, demanding greater equality; an end to violence against women; judicial justice for the victims of violence; free and safe abortion; and a range of other social and economic rights.

Fernanda Pineda, Being © Fernanda Pineda

Fernanda Pineda, Being © Fernanda Pineda

Being,  Fernanda Pineda 
Colombia
Catatumbo is one of the areas with the greatest presence of armed groups in Colombia, where drug trafficking and social exclusion have been major issues. Alejandra Mandón is the first trans woman in Catatumbo, who decided to transition in the middle of the pandemic. Months later, new armed groups appear in the area, breaking the sense of security they had achieved. Alejandra continues her studies and graduates as a teacher, but her fear of the dynamics of the town grows.

María Jesús Pueller, Saya © María Jesús Pueller

María Jesús Pueller, Saya © María Jesús Pueller

María Jesús Pueller, Saya © María Jesús Pueller

Saya, María Jesús Pueller 
Bolivia
Saya is a percussive form of Afro-Bolivian music and dance that originated in the Yungas jungles of Bolivia. According to the photographer María Jesús Pueller, this music “contains the best-kept secrets of Afro-Bolivian communities–their arrival from Africa, their passage through America, their suffering turned into percussion and their pain transformed into songs to the rhythm of the kuancha and the cedar drum.”

Siomara cleans the mirror of her room in her aunt’s house where she and Nicole lived at the time, in Ecatepec, an area of the periphery of the State of Mexico, one afternoon on May 8, 2021.© Greta Rico

Substitute Mother, Greta Rico
Mexico
As the photographer Greta Rico explains, “in November 2017, the body of my cousin Fernanda was found on the street in a garbage bag with signs of sexual violence and three gunshots. This documentary project tells the story of my cousin Siomara who became a substitute mother for her niece Nicole, since her mother was a victim of femicide. The work explores how femicide doesn’t end with the murder itself, but has psychosocial repercussions. Because of gender violence in Mexico, the trauma spreads to the orphaned children and to the mothers, sisters, grandmothers, and aunts who become their substitute mothers.”

Lexi Parra, MiRA © Project MiRA

Mira, Lexi Parra
Venezuela
Founded in 2018, Project MiRA (LOOK) is an alternative educational initiative, bringing mobile photography workshops to vulnerable youth in Venezuela’s capital city, Caracas. Through free community workshops, Project MiRA creates a space for discussion, critical analysis, and visual creation. Participating youth not only learn photography but how to visually represent themselves, their neighborhoods, and larger social issues. Some of the students collaborated with the BDC’s youth program (the Bronx Junior Photo League) in 2022-2023.

Audrey Cordova Rampant, Desaparecidas, Familia Estefhany © Audrey Cordova Rampant

Audrey Cordova Rampant, Desaparecidas, Familia Shirley © Audrey Cordova Rampant

Desaparecidas, Audrey Cordova Rampant
Peru
Desaparecidas (Disappeared Women), is a long investigative story, started in 2017, about the lack of government efforts to find disappeared women in Peru, a country with a high level of femicide and more than ten thousand missing women each year. The project focuses on four families seeking justice, fighting to find out the truth about their disappeared relatives and friends. These families have to face gender violence from police and a justice system not prepared to search for their relatives.

Nuevayorkinos, And If It Wasn’t For The Bronx, Bboy © Nuevayorkinos

And If It Wasn’t For The Bronx, Nuevayorkinos
Nuevayorkinos is a digital archive, multimedia project, and party series dedicated to preserving New York City Latino and Caribbean culture and history through family photographs, videos, and stories. Through a call for submissions from its contributors, Nuevayorkinos will celebrate Latino & Caribbean contributions to Hip-Hop.

Angela Ponce, Only will be black mountains, September 4, 2021, Cusco, Peru. Teresa Mendoza and Agustin Gutierrez © Angela Ponce / Buado

Angela Ponce, Only will be black mountains, December 2, 2021, Ayacucho, Peru. View of the Apumayo open pit gold mine in the community of Chaviña © Angela Ponce / Bloomberg

Only Will Be Black Mountains, Ángela Ponce
Peru
Peru is going through a mining boom, especially in the provinces of Puno, Ayacucho and Cusco in the Andes, where large mining companies are working to extract different types of metals such as copper and gold. However, this activity contributes to global warming and thereby to the melting of the Quelccaya Ice Cap. The first to be affected are the people of the rural communities near the mining camps who find it increasingly impossible to continue farming raising livestock and preserving their mountains.

Sonia Madrigal, La muerte sale por el Oriente © Sonia Madrigal

La Muerte Sale Por El Oriente (Death goes out through the East), Sonia Madrigal
Mexico
According to the National Citizens’ Observatory on Femicide, a national network tracking femicides, ten Mexican women die every day from extreme violence. This project focuses on The State of Mexico, with the highest number of cases, concentrated in municipalities such as Ecatepec, Chimalhuacán and Nezahualcóyotl. Mexico.

Mayra Martell, Anita. Ciudad Juárez, 2005 © Mayra Martell

The Act Of Missing,  Mayra Martell
Mexico
The Act of Missing is a project by Mexican photographer Mayra Martell looking at the disappearance of women and femicide in Ciudad Juarez in the period from 2005 to 2022. It depicts a panorama of terror and violence, ranging from the femicides themselves to the attempts to reconstruct the missing victims’ identities through a variety of methods.

Zahara Gómez Lucini

Recetario Para La Memoria (Recipe Book For Memory) – Zahara Gómez Lucini
Mexico
This project has gathered recipes from Las Rastreadoras del Fuerte, a group of mothers and family members in Los Mochis, Sinaloa–the favorite recipes of their missing relatives, whom they have been searching for since 2014. According to the photographer Zahara Gómez Lucini, “El Recetario para la memoria is a tribute to those who are no longer here and to those of us who still resist–a project to feed our memory and nourish ourselves with resistance.”

Cuerpas Reales, Hinchas Reales, Cortinthians, Brasil © Cuerpas Reales, Hinchas Reales

Cuerpas Reales, Hinchas Reales, Independiente Argentina © Cuerpas Reales, Hinchas Reales

Cuerpas Reales, Hinchas Reales
78 Photographers, 10 Countries
The collective of photographers is an international group of women who share a passion for photography and football (soccer). They seek to challenge gender stereotypes and cultural standards associated with the role of women, and build a more inclusive and violence-free space. The exhibition reflects a variety of ages, bodies, and social struggles, aiming to represent a more complete and diverse image of women and dissidents in football culture.

Artists featured include: Audrey Cordova, Natalia Favre, Zahara Gomez, Nicole Kramm Caifal, Cuerpas Reales Hinchas, Reales, Sonia Madrigal, Mayra Martell, Project MiRA, Musuk Nolte, Nuevayorkinos, Fernanda Pineda, Ángela Ponce, Maria Jesus Folil Pueller, Greta Rico, Federico Ríos Escobar.

The Latin American Foto Festival is curated by Cynthia Rivera and Michael Kamber.

Latin American Foto Festival 2023
July 13–30, 2023 / Bronx Documentary Center, New York
Visit the festival page >