Silence

The series Silencio represents a first approach to Álvaro Ybarra Zavala's most intimate and conceptual work: a body of deeply introspective photography that nonetheless maintains an invisible — yet taut and persistent — thread to his documentary practice. In this series, the artist returns to the emotional echo of the scenes he captured throughout years of witnessing the most turbulent events of our history and our present. This time, his gaze does not turn outward, but inward. Silencio becomes a contained, meditative visual narrative, where the photographer reveals himself to our time through poetic reflection.

The emotional intensity of this series, combined with its formal excellence, transforms the project into a deeply moving photographic experience. Each image acts as a pause, a suspended space in which the viewer may dwell — and be dwelled in. Silencio offers no answers: it opens a shared reflection, and with it, a possibility. An invitation to step into the author's most intimate universe and share with him that silence left behind by all we cannot name, yet never forget.

Álvaro Ybarra Zavala works exclusively with unique prints or editions strictly limited to one copy per format. This decision — deeply linked to his understanding of photography as legacy — is also a form of resistance to the infinite reproducibility of images in the digital age. A firm believer in the role of the collector as a silent co-author, he weaves them into the emotional and symbolic pulse of his photographic universe. This intimate relationship with the object, with time, and with those who preserve it reaffirms his status as a singular photographer: an author who, far from following marked paths, has built a radically honest visual language that moves between memory and the present, between art and life. His voice, now essential for understanding photography in our time, has also become a reference point for a new generation of authors who find in his work an example of authenticity, commitment, and depth.

The works that make up Silencio are contextualized within a photographic trajectory marked by commitment, direct observation, and the need to bear witness. Each image responds to a prolonged process of accompaniment over time, to a sustained lived experience, and is embedded within a body of work that has rigorously documented conflicts, social transformations, and the open wounds of the contemporary world.

The photographs that comprise this series are not conceptual fiction nor an aesthetic gaze detached from context. Each is anchored in a specific reality, in a defined territory, in a moment that condenses years of fieldwork. Yet this time the gaze does not turn outward toward the world, but inward toward itself. Each image is born from the exterior, but reconstructed from within. Each work functions as a symbolic condensation of a broader experience, as a vestige that dialogues with the body of coverage from which it originates.

Tyranny refers to the coverage of Vladimir Putin's regime, initiated in 2004 in Chechnya and extended through the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The photograph was taken in Chernobyl, a territory occupied during the first weeks of the Russian advance. End arises from the documentation of migratory routes across the American continent and was made in the Sonoran Desert, Mexico, one of the deadliest stretches on the journey toward the United States. Greed is part of more than fifteen years of work on Venezuela under the governments of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, with an image taken at Lake Maracaibo, a symbol of the country's environmental and economic collapse.

Past reflects the closure of mines in the León and Asturias coal basins, where the author documented the social consequences of industrial abandonment. Clandestine belongs to the work on the LGBT community in Cuba, persecuted in the early years of the Revolution, instrumentalized during the rapprochement with the United States, and later marginalized once again. Violence was made in Tumaco, Colombia, following the execution of a family accused of collaborating with a rival armed group. The image forms part of a 17-year coverage of the Colombian civil conflict.

Blood is situated on the front line of Avdiivka, Ukraine, yet it condenses years of experience in war zones such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Darfur, Chechnya, and Somalia. Hatred emerges from work in Darfur, documenting one of the most severe genocides of the twenty-first century. Oblivion is linked to the European energy transition and was taken in a former industrial environment affected by the closure of fossil fuel infrastructure. Utopia stems from work on migration toward Europe and was photographed on the coast of Almería, one of the main points of arrival from Africa.

Home forms part of the coverage of the Iraq War, taken in Fallujah while the author was embedded with a unit of U.S. Marines. Revolution belongs to the documentation of repression in authoritarian regimes and was photographed in Cuba during a period of intense internal tension. The Embrace marks an exception within the series: it does not arise from external coverage but from an intimate experience following the death of his mother. The image was made in an abandoned cemetery in Tolima, Colombia, during a personal journey through grief and absence.

Progress documents agro-industrial processes in Latin America, particularly the cultivation of genetically modified crops and large-scale cattle ranching. It was photographed in the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil. Arrogance derives from work on U.S. foreign policy in Iraq and Afghanistan and was made in Ramadi, one of the most hostile areas of the military occupation. Finally, Accomplice belongs to the work on drug trafficking in Colombia and was photographed in a territory dominated by illegal economies and sustained networks of violence.

Silencio does not replace documentary narration: it transcends it. This body of work is a manifesto on the power of photography in the face of oblivion, an act of visual resistance against death and disappearance. A defense of photography as permanence and memory. Not to explain, but to remember. An act of activism against the void.