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Part of our course includes having talks by prominent photographers and practitioners that are thriving in their respective fields. One of the first talks we had was by the very talented Silvana Trevale. She started off by showing us a lot of her earlier work as she felt that it was important to always be reflecting on work that we've created so we can see how much we've improved and to see what the starting points of specific projects look like as a way to understand what we were doing and why.

The first project she actually started talking to us about was her project 'Nosotros' this was her final year project at University. What she wanted to do here was work with people that she really admired especially women within her country. She returned to Venezuela where her family is in order to bring this project to life. She was trying to portray the admiration she felt and to celebrate the women that for her were heroines.

The next project she spoke to us about she started about a year after University. This project, named 'Venezuelan Youth' is still ongoing. The aim of this project is to draw attention to the fact that the youth of Venezuela are struggling because of the situation that they're facing; a situation where they have fewer opportunities and fewer resources such as food and medicine. Through this project she's also trying to find her younger self, the girl that she left in Venezuela. When she was young she had to move to a brand new country leaving behind her comfort zone and her family which she found really hard. And while she found herself in a different situation to the youth of Venezuela, she feels that they both share the same heartbreak related to their home country. It's been a way for her to kind of touch up on the heartbreak that she feels when she thinks about home as she explores it through the people that live there.

She then spoke to us about her work during lockdown. During this time she wanted to explore what we were all going through, specifically what she experienced. Through the whole process she wasn't able to go home to Venezuela, not being able to see who she wants or shoot what she wants during this collective weird life changing situation that's affecting all of us. She spent her lockdown at her boyfriends in Leeds, not being able to return home made her feel frustrated and powerless . She started to question herself asking 'what makes me feel home ?' and 'what makes me feel comfortable /happy /sane ?'

"The person that makes me feel home even though I'm not home"

For her this was a boyfriend and so she got him to model for her for a few days. This project ended up being quite different from her normal work .

She liked the images but she wanted to make it more dense and show how not being able to return home was affecting her. To do this she decided to include low resolution screenshots of her FaceTime calls with her parents and it became a very experimental piece.

She then spoke to us about her time as she did her Masters. She spoke to us about a collaboration with fashion designers and graphic designers which they called lucky Dip. They'd originally planned to do a look book but due to lockdown preventing them from creating the work how they initially planned, they decided to create a website to showcase the fashion instead.

When doing her Masters she'd realised that all her past fashion work was always more editorial like features on the artists. Her personal fashion work had never been with a budget and anything she done with clients or with a budget she had to work with other people's visions. She asked herself what she wanted to portray and what she really wanted to photograph. She wanted to be more bold and experimental. She'd realise that in a lot of her work that way a constant repetition of naked skin, bare skin and the sun, so she decided to bring these factors from her documentary work into her fashion work.

"I'm constantly searching for home ... I search it through people that I work with."

She then spoke to us about her recent jobs and showed us some unpublished work unfortunately I cannot share this with you but it was incredible I'm sure she can't wait to share it.

I feel like there's quite a large link I can make between my work and Silvana's work, particularly Venezuelan Youth. We are both exploring socioeconomic and political subjects that are important to us and trying to navigate our way through them and our feelings related to them. For Silvana, it's trouble back home and her trying to find that part of herself she feels she lost there when she left. For me, I'm exploring myths of women in order to understand the oppression of women and how there are still aspects of it heavily imbued within our society.