CARIBEÑOS - Dagne Cobo Buschbeck

​

Caribeños is a multimedia documentary work that proposes the vindication of the dignity of the bodies and stories of people from the Caribbean who are migrants in Chile, through the story of Makanaky, Wiki, Martina, Mimy and the author.

I am a photographer, journalist, and visual storyteller. My training as a journalist led me to photojournalism and then, motivated by the stories that happened around me in one of the turbulent moments of the social and political history of my country, Venezuela, my practice mutated into documentary filmmaking. Since then, I have focused on telling stories from the intimacy of their protagonists, with special attention to respect, compassion, and empathy. The focus of my work is on issues around gender, health, the environment, migration, racism, and xenophobia.

Although the backbone of my projects is photography, research with journalistic rigor is also essential, as well as experimentation with multimedia formats with video and audio, and more recently staging for exhibitions in galleries.

Caribeños was born as a response to anger and bewilderment over discrimination and xenophobia against people from the Caribbean in Chile. Being a Caribbean, black woman, redefining our nationality and giving it the true meaning it

has for us is a fundamental part of this work, which, in its first chapter, addresses the life experiences of Caribbean people in Chile.​

​

THE SILENCE OF DAWN - Daniela Rivera Antara 

​

​For 6 months I photographed Venezuelan women migrants who live in Lima, Peru. I was visually inspired by their stories, their longing and nostalgia as well as how they perceived themselves within the patriarchal and hierarchical society of Lima. I photographed their objects and spaces to convey the emotions they live with daily after being displaced in a hostile country. In Peru, Venezuelan women experience criminalizing xenophobia differently to men. Through stereotypes perpetrated by local media, men are perceived as murderers and thieves while women are stereotyped as desperate for money, potential sex-workers and without many skills. This has casted women into informal, precarious, feminized and racialized work. Over 5 million Venezuelan migrants have been displaced within Latin America. By 2018 in Peru, 58% were women and by 2019 most women entering the country were under the age of 30 (UNHCR). Many of whom work informal jobs, were paid below minimum wage and encountered barriers for pursuing any form of education. By 2021, over one million Venezuelan migrants had arrived in Peru. It became the second country in the world with the highest population of Venezuelan forced migrants after Colombia. Despite UN suggestions, Peru does not recognize Venezuelan migrants as refugees with a few exceptions for health conditions such as HIV.

​

I CAN'T HEAR THE BIRDS - Fabiola Ferrero

​

​More than 7 million Venezuelans have left the country. My parents, siblings, friends. Myself. I saw my country transform into another and my memories fade, as if I were looking at my childhood through a foggy window.

I Can’t Hear the Birds traces a promise of prosperity. I find migration to be the point where, no matter your social or economic status in Venezuela, we all intersect. We either left or are the ones who are left inside [Venezuela]. I first experienced it from the point of view of the one who stays, and then it became my turn. But I always go back.

Paradoxically, it is migration that allowed me to go back to my country with the emotional distance I needed to finish the project. It changed my relationship with Venezuela and gave me space without compromising my understanding of the situation. Reducing that nostalgic bond allows me work in a different way, getting deep into other people’s stories without clouding the work with my own sadness. I can now constantly return with more clarity to that geographical space that has so many emotional implications.

​

​​​

WHERE YOU ARE NO LONGER ANYTHING + BACK TO THE BLUE - Freisy Gonzáles Portales 

​

​A migration like ours, like that of us Venezuelans, is not planned, it is rather an uprooting.
When you migrate you don’t know when are you going to returned, you start to understand that everything mutates, everything is finite, everything shakes. In this ongoing project, I approached to the phenomenon of uprooting in an introspective and impulsive way, in the feeling of leaving your country suddenly and facing another one, completely unknown. Conjugating one's own experience, with that of other Venezuelan migrants. I found myself reflected in the poetry and also combining different analog and digital formats, my family archive, without planning. The sky threw me in Lima, Perú in 2017, that became my landscape/migrant paradise, an undigested landscape. Where i felt the love, strength and understanding of my people, experimented what is to feel xenophobia, and also understood the weight of colonization in Latin America. Sensation of chaos, passage of time, instability, latent memory, and the opening towards the penetration of the new landscape on the retina, towards the new destination, although it remains uncertain and aimless. At some point while looking at the photos I was taking, I wrote:
Where You Are No Longer Anything
Schizophrenic identity, errant bodies that smell of rootlessness.
We come from the country of sorrow.
We are trees with the branches cut off.
The city forces us to work and in the meantime we sigh.
Drifting aimlessly like trembling animals, trying to seize the world we have infiltrated for the first
time, that still remains unknown.
Unstable and fragile, we give ourselves to, I, myself,
to uncertainty, to loneliness, to desire, to sadness, to forgetfulness, to the open night, to
nothingness.

Back to the Blue (Work in progress)
By forcibly migrating, we become wandering bodies that smell of uprooting.
You don't know when you will return but the return is a pulse, an idea that pierces you and goes through you like
a needle. An idea that settles and invades everything.
Migrating and returning constitute a mirror; a cycle in which everything or nothing changes. No one prepares us
for the return, that complex reverse migration.
To return is to trace the route inward and to realize the longing for hugs.
For now we decided to stay. We decided, I decided, to back to the blue.

---

My photographic work has been influenced by my profession of Anthropology, the approach to history, research and archives, which has led me to be interested in the issues surrounding the cultural and social processes of human groups. Photography for me is an excuse, it is a door to feel, to search without fatigue, to emotion. Photography is a door to life, experience, thoughts and intimacy of people and their infinite geographies; which in turn allows a reaffirmation of my own identity. Both stories starts from my personal story as a migrant and now returnee, which feeds on the stories and experiences of other migrants, through the emotional and psychological, seeking to generate impact and connect with people, but also to generate empathy and understanding in citizens and institutions.

​

 

ZAIBUNNISA + WOMEN FROM PAKISTANI DIASPORA - Maryam Wahid 

​

Maryam Wahid’s work is deeply rooted in her personal experience with migration, particularly through the exploration of her mother’s journey from Pakistan to the UK. In her Zaibunnisa series, Wahid documents the emotional journey she shared with her mother during her first visit to Pakistan in 2019, marking her mother’s first trip back in 24 years. As they explored her maternal family home, Wahid reflected on what her life could have been had she grown up there, weaving themes of memory, loss, and identity into her work. This personal connection to migration is a central theme in Wahid’s broader practice.
In her Women from the Pakistani Diaspora series, Wahid focuses on the vital role that women like her mother played in shaping the British Pakistani community. By revisiting key locations and using self-portraits, Wahid honours the resilience of these migrant women, who navigated the complexities of displacement while creating a sense of home for their families. This body of work highlights how these women continue to challenge gender roles and empower future generations. Wahid’s practice reflects the complexities of migration, encompassing themes of adaptation, belonging, and transformation while celebrating the contributions of migrant women in shaping communities.

​​​

​

50 YEARS LATER—WHERE DO I GO? - Rania Matar

 

2025 marks the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War. As we approach this symbolic date, Lebanon still suffers its consequences – and more. 

The past 4 years, conditions have deteriorated fast, especially after the August 4, 2020 Port of Beirut explosions that further plunged Lebanon into the abyss and total economic meltdown. According to the World Bank, Lebanon experienced the most devastating, multi-pronged crisis in its modern history, and one of the most severe crises globally since the mid-nineteenth century. As I write this, in January 2025, Lebanon is barely emerging from under the bombs in a precarious ceasefire with Israel.

However, I found hope and inspiration in the women who were volunteering in the reconstruction after the Port explosions. Instead of focusing on destruction, I chose to focus on their majestic presence, their creativity, strength, dignity, and resilience.

The project kept evolving as I collaborated with them and as the situation on the ground kept evolving. The port explosions now feel like part of the linear history of a country defined by conflicts for close to 50 years. We collaborated against meaningful and symbolic backdrops of the unique textures of the country: layered walls of Beirut, the Mediterranean, raw mountains, traditional and abandoned buildings, and the many layers of destruction accumulated over the years. Every picture has a narrative. The women, the land, the architecture are intertwined.  The collaboration is intense, creative, emotional, and personal. The need to hold on to creativity and self-expression feels urgent.

I see my younger self in these women. I viscerally feel their hopes, their pains, dreams, fears, and dilemmas. I was twenty when I left Lebanon in 1984 during the Civil War, to go study in the United States, in what had been the largest wave of emigration–until now. Many are now at that same juncture. The images address the issue of exile, my own, but also those young women's and the painful decision they face in determining whether to leave home, or to remain despite the fraught conditions.

While my photographs may not provide answers or solutions, I hope they can act as moments of contemplation in finding the beauty, the humanity, and the grace that still exist despite all.  They are my love letter to the women of Lebanon.