The 9th annual Latin American Foto Festival (LAFF), hosted by the Bronx Documentary Center (BDC), took place from July 9 to July 26, with events happening there as well as throughout the neighborhood of Melrose.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the only festival in New York dedicated exclusively to photography from Latin America and the Caribbean, the South Bronx was transformed into an open-air gallery with large-scale outdoor installations alongside indoor exhibitions and public programs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Exhibitions in this year\u2019s festival included: \u201cVenezuela in Flux\u201d by photojournalist Mat\u00edas Delacroix, \u201cLO OSCURO DEL R\u00cdO (THE DARKNESS OF THE RIVER)\u201d by Chilean native Cristian Ochoa, and \u201cCerros de Pasco\u201d by Peruvian native Marco Garro. The photojournalists spoke with Caribbean Life about their journeys to creating them, which took several years to complete, with lots of traveling involved.<\/p>\n
For Delacroix, the greatest influence on his career path was his desire to understand history through facts as a child. Since he grew up with unanswered questions about what his family had lived through, he wanted to understand where, when, and how those events unfolded.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Similar to Delacroix, Ochoa sees his family, his love for the river where he lives, and various situations he\u2019s experienced as things that influenced him most in his photography career.<\/p>\n
Discussing how he got interested in pursuing his career, Delacroix shared that working for an international news agency had always been his dream, but since it was very difficult to find an opportunity in Chile, he decided to leave at 25. He spent time in Australia and New Zealand, working on farms and packing kiwifruit to save money for camera equipment. He moved to Venezuela in 2019, where the news environment opened the door for him to work first with AFP and later to join The Associated Press as a staff photographer.<\/p>\n
Ochoa is a self-taught photographer who had a quiet life, growing up in a small town in southern Chile called \u201cLos Lagos,\u201d in a middle-class family. \u201cI studied Civil Engineering. In my free time, I dedicated myself to photography. I began to focus intensely on photography, which led to significant positive changes in me. These changes motivated me to pursue photography professionally, leaving my engineering career behind,\u201d he explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Garro\u2019s interest in photography began in his childhood, since he grew up in a neighborhood where he and his friends would spend hours recording our everyday lives with digital video cameras. The interest continued to grow while Garro was studying photojournalism and analog film processing in college, through which he became fascinated not only by the photographic process itself but also by how images are constructed and the stories they can tell.<\/p>\n
![\"Juan](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/image-6.jpg\")
Juan Panez takes his cattle to graze near mining pipelines, cleared areas, and tailings ponds on Nov. 11, 2020 in Cerro de Pasco, Peru. The herder recalls how the expansion of mining activity has transformed the landscape since he was a child.Marco Garro<\/p>\n
Describing his life growing up, Delacroix said his parents always emphasized the importance of strong values, education, and hard work. Though he never had the opportunity to study photography at university because his family couldn\u2019t afford the tuition, he taught himself and relied on the values he learned at home, which became his greatest education. A life experience that has shaped his work has been migration. At the age of four, his family moved from Argentina to Chile because of economic circumstances. After that, they kept moving from city to city. Later, by choice, he moved to another continent in search of opportunities before eventually returning to Latin America.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ochoa lived for a time in Antofagasta, the city with the highest per capita income in Chile, a city with significant social inequalities, and thus he got involved in activism for migrant rights and the environment, which still shapes his work today.<\/p>\n
Living in Venezuela for more than six years allowed Delacroix to truly understand the country\u2019s reality from the inside. For this exhibition, he\u2019s done things such as descend more than 100 meters underground into the gold mines of El Callao or endure the intense heat of Maracaibo, home to South America\u2019s largest proven oil reserves.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The photographs in Garro\u2019s exhibition are part of Quiulacocha, which began in Cerro de Pasco, a mining city in the Peruvian Andes that has lived with the consequences of mineral extraction for more than a century.\u00a0<\/p>\n
One thing Delacroix admires about festivals like LAFF is that they take photography beyond the editorial world, since the images become accessible to everyone, sparking conversations among audiences. He also shared the ways he hopes his exhibition brings encouragement to the Venezuelan people, especially after the recent twin earthquakes that happened there on June 24.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"Lo](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1785178328_380_image-5.jpg\")
Lo oscuro del r\u00edo (Spanish: The Darkness of the River, 2025).Cristian Ochoa<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope the exhibition helps foster empathy and reminds people that Venezuela\u2019s story doesn\u2019t end with a single headline,\u201d he stated. \u201cThe country has endured one crisis after another, and the recent twin earthquakes have added yet another layer of pain to a population that has already shown extraordinary resilience. I hope these photographs encourage people not to look away, but to remember those who are still rebuilding their lives, grieving their losses and searching for hope amid the devastation.\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition, Delacroix hopes to inspire younger generations by showing them that important stories can come from anywhere.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
Ochoa\u2019s current artistic work focuses on creating opportunities to motivate new generations to learn more about the territories they inhabit, since knowledge leads to action to protect the spaces where we live.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cRegarding the work I\u2019m presenting at LAFF, I want communities to understand the importance of protecting the territories they live in, highlighting the vulnerability these territories can present in these turbulent times for humanity,\u201d continued Ochoa.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Garro encourages young photographers to stay curious, be patient, and approach every person they photograph with respect, empathy, and a genuine willingness to listen. <\/p>\n
\u201cPhotography has the power to ask difficult questions, amplify voices that are often unheard, and create meaningful dialogue. It is those stories that can change the way we see the world, help us understand ourselves a little better, and perhaps inspire us and raise questions that lead to change,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 9th annual Latin American Foto Festival (LAFF), hosted by the Bronx Documentary Center (BDC), took place from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":306878,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,9,24,63,129,131,130],"class_list":["post-306877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306877\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}