Currently based in London, photographer Silvana Trevale has returned to her home country of Venezuela every year since 2017 to document the lives of Venezuelan youth and the struggles they are facing in a time of economic, social and political unrest. Her two most recent projects, “Warm Rain” and “Venezuelan Youth”, explore the transitory stage between the youthful exuberance of childhood and the onset of a stoic early adulthood, expedited by external circumstances.

“I initiated this project due to the frustration and anger I feel towards the current crisis in Venezuela,” she explains, continuing—“as well as a faint nostalgia towards a Venezuela that my parents once lived in, yet one that myself and the young living in Venezuela today didn’t. What intrigues me are the children’s constant shifts from a state of playful naivety, hardening into a more rigid, stoic attitude to their lived realities. Not only are they confronting the extreme food and medicine shortages that have caused the death of many around them, but also the lack of opportunities, leaving little room for hope, except for the possibility of leaving the country. With the images, I intended to create an abstract calming state I imagine the young feel between their innocence and a seemingly inevitable premature maturation.”

See more from Silvana Trevale below!