fEDERICO eSTOL
2025 Foto forum santa fe Photography award winner
Solo Exhibition: Opening June 6th, 2025
Federico Estol is an Uruguayan photographer and artivist. He currently works as a visual storyteller producing stories in Latin America, his long-term projects are focused on the relationship between cultural identity, inequality and social justice. In addition, he is the artistic director of the international festival SAN JOSÉ FOTO and editor of photobooks at El Ministerio Ediciones. His works are represented by East Wing Gallery Doha-Berlin. Estol holds a bachelor's degree in photography from the UPC-Barcelona Tech University and a degree in popular education from MFAL Franciscan Multiversity. His work has garnered awards including Emergentes award at Encontros da Imagem festival (Portugal), IILA-FOTOGRAFIA award (Italy), Critical Mass Photolucida award from the Oregon Center of Photography (USA), FELIFA best International photobook award (Argentina), Jury award at Lenzburg photofestival (Switzerland), Latin American photobook award from Montevideo Center of Photography (Uruguay) and Expert Award of the Lishui Photography Museum (China).
Artist Statement
SHINE HEROES
There are 3000 shoe shiners who go out into the streets of La Paz and El Alto suburbs each day in search of clients. They are from all ages and in recent years have become a social phenomenon in the Bolivian capital. What characterizes this urban tribe is the use of ski masks so they will not be recognized by those around them. The mask is their strongest identity, what makes them invisible while at the same time unites them. This collective anonymity makes them tougher when facing the rest of society and is their resistance against the exclusion they suffer because they carry out this work. For three years I have been collaborating with sixty shoe shiners associated with the NGO "Hormigón Armado". We planned together the scenes during a series of graphic novels workshops, incorporating the local elements of the urbanity of El Alto and producing photographic sessions with them as co-authors of a street photobook to fight against their social discrimination.
