El Puente: On Juvenile Incarceration in Argentina (2023 – present) is a community-based empathetic documentary project using photographs to facilitate conversations and share the lives, experiences, tensions, and joys of juveniles living within the carceral systems in La Plata, Argentina. The project is produced in collaboration with El Puente Arte y Cultura and Residencia Corazón.

El Puente Arte y Cultura is an organization that brings artists in collaboration with incarcerated youth, group foster homes, and other communities facing tough social economic realities. After a series of careful conversations, I was invited to visit Centro Cerrado Almafuerte, a prison for young men ages 15-21, named for an Argentine poet whose surname literally translates as “strong soul.”

The range of offenses varies from shoplifting to homicide. Some of these young people are there for short stretches, others will age into adult prisons. Escapes are not uncommon. The living conditions are dilapidated and not well maintained, with sometimes literal holes in the wall to the outside air. Many of the youth sleep on bare foam mattresses. After spending time with El Puente, making photographs with youth participants, and hearing their stories, I knew more time was crucial.

I started applying to project-based grants to return and was fortunate to find funding to be able to return in June and July of 2024, July 2025, and June 2026. In addition to Almafuerte, I gained access to four more juvenile prisons near La Plata: Centro de Recepción Eva Perón, Centro Cerrado Eva Perón, Centro Cerrado Castillito, and Centro Cerrado Pellegrini. The lines in and between these types of spaces is blurry at best, dictated by extremely limited resources and delicate balances between freedom, care, and control. I approach this work and these spaces with care, humbly and earnestly, eager to listen, learn, and find productive ways to contribute through pictures.

I have made a lot of photographs over the four annual visits. I work by observing, photographing, and sharing images for feedback and further conversation. Everyone is asked if they want to participate, how they want to be represented, which photographs convey something deeper. I also respect when someone chooses not to participate.

This time has impacted me deeply as an artist, asking me to slow down, consider and re-consider my intentions, learn how to communicate across languages and cultures, and discover how to build trust with young people that do not trust easily. I have also continued to photograph several of the youth over multiple years, learning the textures of their lives over an extended timeframe.

My guiding question is, how can I, as the artist, build personal relationships to create collective portraits of these communities using photography and oral histories in collaborative exchange?

I think a lot about Trinh T. Minh-ha’s idea of “speaking nearby,” and with a gentle touch, holding space for both difference and understanding, softly offering invitations for contributions and participation.

I also think a lot about how stories of youth incarceration in Argentina can resonate in the United States, where community members, both documented and undocumented, are being profiled, kidnapped, and disappeared daily by masked government agents and opaque private and public prison systems.