When tasked with finding beauty, conventional wisdom advises to find it in the everyday, in the small and seemingly ordinary things around us—sunsets, kindness in strangers, an old book with notes on the margins. When Silvana Trevale, a 30-year-old Venezuelan photographer, is tasked with unveiling beauty, she will not settle for serendipity. She will hunt it down.
First, she will cross the Atlantic to Caracas, Venezuela. There, a three-and-a-half-hour drive awaits to traverse a lush rainforest, leading to the small coastal village of Choroní, where a boat will break spiky waves until it arrives to Chuao, a small village founded circa 1660 that can only be reached by water, known for its cacao plantations and colorful festivities. Faced with the Caribbean Sea to the north, Chuao finds itself cocooned by a mountain range that fades in the horizon. A delicate mist hangs in the air, a subtle reminder of the distance that separates Milan from this remote paradise, where a dressmaker named Tibisay lives.
In the middle of town, lies a white colonial-style church. And in front of the church, a simple square. “I met a number of women who worked with cacao”, says Silvana. “It was a surreal experience, (...) seeing them, all dressed up, walking with their tools to go pick and dry the seed.” The sight of them spreading the picked cacao in circles on the public square floor, in front of the whiter-than-white church, is the purest definition of beauty for Silvana.
The photographer s journey to Chuao is part of her work as a commissioned artist by PhotoVogue Festival. She was chosen as one of three artists to create new original and personal work that captures the essence of modern beauty, and that is inspired by the values shared between the festival and Puig, the Barcelona-based premium beauty company supporting this edition. The artists have been given a blank canvas and complete creative freedom to portray what beauty means to them today.
Silvana was particularly inspired by two of Puig’s values: contagious enthusiasm, and fairness and respect. “To think that these women do this with so much love and pride, that makes me think of contagious enthusiasm,” Silvana explains, “it also makes me think of fairness and respect, because they do their work with transparency, integrity, and respect to the land. Their methods are artisanal because they want to keep the soil as virgin as possible.” Chuao s neighbor, Choroní, is renowned for its tourism, yet the cacao-rich region also attracts a significant number of international visitors who make a pilgrimage to the land of the finest cacao. When consumed in its raw form, some describe its flavor as reminiscent of soursop. Encased in a luscious white pulp, it s truly astonishing to contemplate the wonders that originate from this seed.
There was also a sense of responsibility that weighed heavily over Silvana when choosing her subject, “there are so many beautiful things in my country, and people know about our great cacao, but they don’t know about how this town is basically run by women, and how they care for it, and that’s what I wanted to portray, their power and the immense love that they have for their craft.”
Among them is the woman who brought Silvana to Chuao in the first place, Tibisay Planchez Ladera. “I learned about this woman who made dresses for the Carnaval queens out of found objects and recycled materials. When I saw the pictures, they were just spectacular.” Cacao leaves, seeds, beer or soda bottle caps, and food packaging, Tibisay, will make a dress out of almost anything. Armed with a silicone gun, thread and needle, she has become the de facto costume designer in Chuao.
“I have been doing these ecological garments for 15 years,” Tibisay told me, who had to go to the local hospital to get reception for a call, “I made the first one for a cousin who was going to participate [in the carnival], and when people questioned the fact that I had done it, I took on the challenge of making all of the next year’s dresses. Because of that, I got commissioned more and more. Now I make them for all the contestants.” There are several pageants during Chuao’s carnival, there is a queen of the carnival, a queen of cacao, a fisherman queen and the queen of tourism. “I make twelve dresses in total for those days, but there are also the ones I make for other towns and festivities, like San Juan”. But Tibisay, 38, doesn’t make a living out of her designs, she is a public worker, sweeping the streets of the town and keeping the beaches clean. That s where a lot of her inspiration comes from. "The most beautiful thing for me is nature, it comes directly from God."
A true artist, Tibisay is both her happiest and most tormented when she is making dresses or Christmas decor for the town’s public spaces. Time will pass without her noticing. She woke up three times in one night when making the dresses and headpieces for Silvana’s photoshoot. “There’s one that I’m still not convinced of, the structure is off,” she says, but Silvana was happy, and that’s what’s important.
“I guess when you think of beauty you don’t think about this”, Silvana says at one point. “But the moment I get to Chuao, I am so happy, and I guess I want to show that too. I want people to know these powerful, talented and loving women exist.”
Silvana Trevale was born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela. Her portrait based work is a fusion between documentary and fashion. She seeks to celebrate the intrinsic beauty of the human body, her Latin American roots, womanhood, youthhood and the realities of people around her.
The escalating crisis in her home country motivated her to produce the series Venezuelan Youth . This project was presented at Silvana s solo exhibition at ThePrintSpace in London and the Vogue Italia s Photo Vogue Festival in 2020. Furthermore, Silvana has earned recognition for other projects such as Comadres , Cayetana and others exhibited at the PhotoVogue Festival in 2020, 2022, and 2023.
The photographer has returned to Venezuela every year since 2017 to document the lives of women, the youth, and children amidst the backdrop of economic, social, and political turmoil. Her academic journey, pursuing a Master s degree, has allowed her to delve deeper into her familial roots. Silvana collaborated from afar with her grandmother, Rosa, and her mother, Maria, crafting a heartfelt homage to Latin American mothers. She takes pride in paying tribute to her personal heroines, exemplified by formidable women like her great grandmother, Cayetana.
Silvana s creative mission is to conjure up childhood memories, invoking the nostalgia of the ocean, the sun, and the warmth of her homeland, Venezuela, even while residing far from its shores. Over the past two years, her work has centered on celebrating the multi-faceted nature of her homeland, a place where beauty and chaos harmoniously coexist. Witnessing the endurance of traditions during trying times has driven her to document them, ensuring their preservation for posterity, so they are never lost nor forgotten.
