Héroes del brillo

Biographie

Federico Estol is photographer and artivist. He currently works as a visual storyteller producing stories in Latin America, his long-term projects are focused in the relationship between cultural identity, inequality and social justice. Also is the artistic director of San José Foto festival and editor of El Ministerio Ediciones photobook publishing house.
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), New Visión award at Cortona on the Move festival (Italy), Photolucida award of the Oregon Center of Photography (USA), FELIFA International photobook award (Argentina) and Expert Award of the Lishui Photography Museum (China).
He has also been a nominee for the Paris Photo–Aperture Photobook Award (France), the Prix Pictet (Switzerland) and the Kaunas Photo Star (Lithuania).

Présentation

Every day, thousands of shoeshine boys seek out new customers in the streets of La Paz, the capital of Bolivia. Whether they're old or young (schoolchildren or students), unemployed or struggling to make ends meet, all shoe-shiners have in common the desire to get by, to earn a little extra money to make life a little easier.
In recent years, this workforce has become a veritable social phenomenon in the Bolivian capital.
Somewhat ironically, shoeshine boys wear ski masks on their faces - a device used to protect their anonymity.
So, in the areas where they live, few people know that their neighbors work as shoe-shiners, and many others hide their profession from their classmates and friends.
The masks provide a strange and seemingly contradictory duality: they offer a marginalized community the security of anonymity in the face of social exclusion, stigmatization and discrimination, and at the same time the image of urban superheroes meeting the unwavering local demand for polished shoes