Photographer and Anthropologist Andrés Yépez is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this photo essay. From the project ‘OOMO’. To see Andrés’ body of work, click on any image.

“Oomo” means “Burn” in the native language of La Chiquitanía, Bolivia, the besiro. An adolescent’s transition is crossed by elements – internal and external – that build their identity. Through portraiture, this project uses light and color as a bridge that creates an analogy of the identity that is woven between young people of a region with a great colonial beta, but who also experience their own sensations from this stage of life where they discover themselves and also recognize the other.

To feel through this reddish light – so characteristic of this province – the elements that generate a sense of belonging and the new sensations that are a reflection of an identity under construction, where the new, the modern, but also begin to be housed It converges with that trace of the colony, still so present, in the towns of the region.

Understand the components of a portrait, be it human or symbolic, as an encounter between light, color and form to read portions of a universe that represents the interweaving of meanings that give new meanings to adolescents.