The big picture: Siblings in the surf

It’s a moment of complicated joy. The three siblings in Silvana Trevale’s photograph, from her new book Venezuelan Youth, had been wanting to go to the beach for so long but were unable to make the trip, despite living just 10 miles inland from the Caribbean sea. Trevale had known the siblings for years – they were neighbours of her grandmother’s in a town outside Caracas – and she knew that, like many in Venezuela, they were going through a desperately tough time. A day at the beach would give them a much-needed moment of respite.

The photograph was taken in 2019, midway through Trevale’s work on the project. She was born in Venezuela but, as life became increasingly fraught there, her parents sent her to the US to learn English. Later, she studied photography in the UK. Documenting her home country’s young people was a way of reconnecting with the country she’d left behind. “My camera became a tool to explore this heartbreak, this identity that I lost,” she says, “but also a way of getting it back through the youth. Even though they’re in very tough situations, there’s a certain hope, a strength in them that I admire so much.”

For Wanda, the eldest of these three siblings, hope was especially hard to hold on to. Sixteen at the time, she was pregnant as a result of being raped. “It’s a really, really hard reality,” says Trevale. “You could see it in her face: she was so angry, like, how is this fair to me?”

When they reached the beach at Río Chico, her younger siblings relaxed into it straight away. “For Wanda it was a little bit harder,” says Trevale, “but after a while they were all having fun. It was so beautiful to see.” The image encapsulates what the photographer was trying to achieve in the book: “to find that bridge between innocence and hardship”. “When you’re young, there are certain realities that show you life can be hard. But at the same time you have that innocence, you still see light in your life, and with the people around you. That’s what I wanted to document.”

Venezuelan Youth by Silvana Trevale is published by Guest Editions on 7 May and will be displayed at Guest Editions’ east London project space from 7 to 30 May

Photograph by Silvana Trevale 2025