Venezuelan Youth by Silvana Trevale

A poignant photographic testament beyond a country in crisis

Produced between 2016 and 2025, Venezuelan Youth is Silvana Trevale’s paean to her homeland - a testament that distances itself from the frequently negative portrayals of a country in crisis to offer up a sensitive and profound view of the complexities of Venezuelan identity as seen through the eyes of its youth. Released as a hardback monograph from independent London publishers Guest Editions, Venezuelan Youth will launch on 7 May 2026 and be displayed at Guest Editions’ East London project space from 7 - 30 May 2026.

The question at the forefront of this body of work for Trevale was how to document a place dismissed by many as a ruin despite it clearly teeming with life. Her eventual answer was to capture the children and adolescents who live there and the sense of incredible lightness they project even during undeniably difficult circumstances.

Returning to Venezuela from London annually since 2017, Trevale has been intent on exploring the lives of its youth and their daily struggles. Travelling outside of the capital of Caracas, she spent extended time with her subjects and their families to build up closer relationships and gain a more intimate insight into their lives. Venezuelan Youth was inspired by both a faint sense of nostalgia for the Venezuela that her parents once lived in contrasted with her own very different experience and that of today’s youth and therefore Trevale’s resultant frustration and anger towards the impact of the country’s current troubles.

Photographing her young subjects, Trevale found herself intrigued and fascinated by their constant shifting - from a state of playful naivety that then hardens into a more rigid, stoic attitude toward 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. As she explains of Venezuelan Youth, “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.”

Thomas Coombes, founder and creative director of Guest Editions, says of Venezuelan Youth, “After many years in the making, and having long admired the work of Silvana Trevale, we are excited to be releasing such a poignant body of work. We have worked in close partnership with Caracas-based designer Ricardo Báez, and the result is a true and meaningful representation of Venezuelan life, filled with so much love and soul.”

For Trevale, Venezuelan Youth permits her to transform the trauma of having left her country into a tribute to the strength of those who still remain. In so doing, she has created a body of work that reflects the Venezuela that truly exists: “the one I love deeply, a wounded and fearful country, but one that still breathes hope.”

Petare, 2021 © Silvana Trevale, Courtesy Guest Editions

Los Roques, 2022 © Silvana Trevale, Courtesy Guest Editions

About Silvana Trevale
Silvana Trevale (b. 1993) is a Venezuelan photographer based in New York, London and Paris. Her portrait-based work is a fusion of documentary and fashion; she seeks to celebrate the intrinsic beauty of the human body, her Latin American roots, womanhood, youth, and the realities of the people around her.

She has exhibited extensively and internationally including – 2025 Photo London Fair, Somerset House. | 2025 Pájara, CDMX Art Week at Mooni; 2024 Prix Picto Photographie de Mode, Palais Galliera, Paris. | 2024 Symbols of Identity, Miami. | 2024 SWAB Art Fair, Objects of Desire: A Study of Transition. | 2024 Tejiendo Identidades, Sorondo Projects, Barcelona. | 2023 Unveiling Beauty in Chuao, PUIG, Vogue Italia. | 2022 Photo Vogue Festival, Vogue Italia. | 2021 Photo Vogue Festival, Vogue Italia. | 2021 Palm* Photo Prize, 10 14 Gallery. | 2020 Photo Vogue Festival, Vogue Italia. | 2020 “Venezuelan Youth” Solo Show, ThePrintSpace, London. | 2018 PYLOT Magazine Open Call. | 2018 Palm* Photo Prize, House of Vans. | 2018 RPS 160. | 2018 OffSpring Photomeet, ThePrintSpace, London. | 2018 Pingyao International Photography Festival, China.

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Respiro, 2019 © Silvana Trevale, Courtesy Guest Editions

Beso playero, 2021 © Silvana Trevale, Courtesy Guest Editions

About Guest Editions
Guest Editions is an independent publisher based in London, partnering with some of the most exciting artists working in the fields of contemporary, documentary, and fine art photography today. Past Guest Editions titles include The Anthropocene Illusion by Zed Nelson, Genesis by Juan Brenner, and Youth Without Age and Life Without Death by Laura Pannack.

Guest Project Space is the physical home of Guest Editions and a dynamic gallery dedicated to photography and visual arts in London. Through a diverse program, it offers a unique platform for contemporary art and creative research, encouraging dialogue and cultural exchange.

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Isaac and Yonaiker, 2021 © Silvana Trevale, Courtesy Guest Editions

Los Caracas, 2022 © Silvana Trevale, Courtesy Guest Editions

Anastasia Samoylova: Atlantic Coast

By Anastasia Samoylova

Publisher : Aperture and the Norton Museum of Art

2025 | 144 pages

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Where once small towns and coastal communities had a certain stillness, Samoylova finds change carved into facades and roadside signs, into suburban sprawl and shuttered shopfronts. She frames these scenes with a photographer’s patience and a poet’s sensitivity — capturing abandoned diners, empty motels, decaying houses, ghostly intersections. At the same time, there is stubborn life: occasional portraits of people, wildlife, reminders that behind every sign of decline, someone, something endures.

Her book does not simply document physical places. It traces the shifting contours of identity, belonging and memory in a nation where the open road has long symbolized freedom — and where that ideal has become tangled with consumerism, environmental degradation, and socio-economic upheaval. Through Atlantic Coast, Samoylova asks whether the “American Dream” remains intact, or if it has fractured along with the towns her car passes through.

Reading this volume is to experience a slow, attentive journey — as a witness, as a traveller, as someone invited to reconsider what America has become. Her photographs linger, subtly unsettling the viewer’s assumptions about beauty, progress and decline. In its silence and restraint, the book whispers that memory, identity and place are fragile — and that every road carries stories worth listening to.

Lisette Model

By Lisette Model

Publisher : Prestel

2026 | 256 pages

Lisette Model presents a definitive exploration of one of the most influential photographers of the twentieth century, whose bold vision reshaped the way urban life and society were captured on film. This stunning hardcover features over 200 reproductions, ranging from her early Parisian portraits to the striking images of New York streets that defined her career.

Model’s photographic journey began in Vienna and matured in France, where her keen eye for social observation developed. Early works, including portraits of idle elites in Nice, reveal her sharp sense of critique tempered by empathy. These images, at once confrontational and intimate, established her as a formidable observer of human behavior. After emigrating to the United States, Model brought this incisive approach to New York, producing iconic images such as the Coney Island Bather and the Cafe Metropole series, which juxtapose vitality, vulnerability, and the stark contrasts of city life.

Her lens captured both the glamour and grit of her surroundings: the bustling streets of the Lower East Side, the grandeur of high-society gatherings, and the nuanced everyday gestures that reveal the inner lives of her subjects. Model’s distinctive framing, bold compositions, and unflinching attention to human detail created a visual language that remains influential to this day.

This collection also includes lesser-known works from her travels along the U.S. West Coast and Venezuela, highlighting her continued exploration of character, form, and place. Insights from scholar Walter Moser contextualize her work within the broader trajectory of twentieth-century photography, illuminating her enduring impact as both an artist and a teacher.

Lisette Model is more than a retrospective; it is an immersive journey into a world seen through a lens of unvarnished reality and poetic observation. It celebrates a photographer whose fearless engagement with her subjects, combined with her artistic rigor, forged a path for generations of street and documentary photographers, offering an essential resource for enthusiasts and scholars alike.

All About Lisette Model

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By Fred Herzog

Publisher : Hatje Cantz

2026 | 144 pages

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After emigrating from Germany to Vancouver in 1953 and working by day as a medical photographer, Herzog spent his evenings and weekends roaming the city streets. He captured storefronts, everyday people going about their lives, second-hand shops, Chinatown alleys, decaying cars, neon reflections — details often overlooked, but rich with character. He treated photography not as artifice but as observation, documenting modern urban life with precision and empathy. His photographs turned ordinary city scenes into a tribute to human presence and urban texture.

The volume collects these rediscovered gems alongside his best-known photos, offering a more complete portrait of a photographer who stubbornly trusted color when many of his peers turned away. The images span Vancouver and also trace Herzog’s travels to the U.S., the Caribbean, Mexico and Central America, showing a restless spirit and a worldwide curiosity. Each frame is infused with intimacy, subtle humor, and a respect for the quotidian — light on one face, a reflection in a shop window, the curve of a car hood shimmering in rain.

Fred Herzog: A Color Legacy is not just a homage to a photographer but a statement about memory, time, and beauty in the urban fabric. It reminds us how much of a city’s soul lives in small moments — a street sign, a storefront, a quiet onlooker — and how color, long seen as frivolous in serious photography, can reveal more truth than monochrome ever could.

All About Fred Herzog

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By Tara Pixley, Judy Walgren

Publisher : ‎ Routledge

2025 | 226 pages

An essential introduction to the complexities of visual representation, this book offers a critical new framework for understanding and practicing photojournalism in a global digital context.

Critical Photojournalism guides readers through a variety of ethical, technical and business skills, plus the mental health, self-care and safety considerations necessary to thrive in the field. Drawing on their extensive industry and teaching experience, the authors provide real-world advice on how to navigate the demands of the profession while addressing the impact that photojournalism has on society and ways that photojournalists can mitigate harm. Consideration is given to understanding and disrupting implicit bias and power structures in newsrooms, as well as issues around access, working in breaking news environments and balancing informed consent with varying media laws around the world. In accessible language, this book highlights the importance of collaboration and community engagement in contemporary photojournalism and encourages students to adopt a decolonial approach to their work. Readers will learn to balance the needs for accuracy and thoughtfulness with the priorities of a global, social-media-engaged audience.

This is a key textbook for those seeking a nuanced introduction to visual journalism and/or a fresh approach to their craft. This book is supported by a website which can be accessed at www.criticalphotojournalism.com. The website includes a full-length bonus chapter on video and photojournalism, interviews with professional visual journalists, further tips and tools, and a glossary of key terms.

Venezuelan Youth by Silvana Trevale

A poignant photographic testament beyond a country in crisis

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