ONLY HAVE FAITH
The project follows a year of excavation at the Colinas de Santa Fe mass grave in the state of Veracruz—a site that emerged from the staggering number of forced disappearances in the country and is considered one of the largest clandestine graves discovered in recent Latin American history. The series tells the story of the mothers of Colectivo Solecito de Veracruz, a volunteer collective who led the search and continue to seek their disappeared loved ones across multiple locations. Their perseverance embodies both resistance and mourning, revealing the human dimension of systemic violence and the emotional hardship left in its wake.
Mainstream media has often sensationalized violence for profit, turning photojournalism into a competitive industry and commodifying tragedy. Adél’s work stands apart by focusing on landscapes, resilient individuals, and a stylistic evolution. She juxtaposes neglected infrastructure with nature’s bounty, capturing the human cost through testimonies rather than graphic imagery.
“I saw a mass grave with fifteen people. I had never seen human remains before. Never. I wish I never had. It’s burned into my memory. I remember that when I got close, butterflies flew out—the kind that come from corpses. Many butterflies. There was so much blood, so much fat, remains, clothes… and I clearly remember a full skeleton, as if it were asleep. It’s something I’ll carry forever. I remember it well, because yes, it gave me a bit of hope—maybe that person didn’t suffer as much. Like I told you, I would have preferred never to see that in my life. That’s what I would have wanted. But reality is different. When we find remains, we usually say a few words. We like to greet them: “Welcome back. Welcome, we receive you with care and appreciation.” Some mothers pray. Why do we say that? We say it because the last thing these people experienced in life was violence, hatred, resentment, darkness. And when that grave is opened again, and it’s us who are there, we want them to feel received—to see the light of El Solecito.”
2017 - 2019, Mexico
The Beginning of El Solecito: Resistance Through Unity
“My son was kidnapped in July 2013, and El Solecito was founded in May 2014. There were about seven or eight of us—mothers in Veracruz without a collective, each searching for our children. At that time, I was going through something terrible—a deep, overwhelming depression. By 2014, I had already knocked on every door.
I was desperate, and I realized we needed to come together to form a united front. One mother alone doesn’t carry much weight—but a group? A group has strength. If we wanted to be heard, we had to speak out, take to the streets, and stand together in resistance.
When the Ayotzinapa tragedy happened in 2014, and we saw the mothers in Iguala out there searching the hills with nothing—just machetes, sticks—that opened our eyes. We said to ourselves: “We can do that too. But we’ll do it with tools. We’ll do it better prepared. We can build on what they started.” We went to Iguala to learn from the way they worked. We also attended workshops with different organizations in Mexico City.
We grew quickly—within two months we were already 40. Today, there are more than 300 of us.”
Veracruz, Mexico, 2017
MEDIUM: Archival pigment print on fine art rag paper
SIZE: Height: 100 cm Width: 120 cm
EDITION: 6 (+2 AP)
Veracruz, Mexico, 2018
MEDIUM: RA-4 color darkroom print
SIZE: H 60 cm x W 90 cm
EDITION: 6 (+2 AP)
“Veracruz is beautiful. Full of life, light, and the heat of the tropics.”
Veracruz, Mexico, 2018
MEDIUM: Archival pigment print on fine art rag paper
Size: H 70 cm x W 100 cm
EDITION: 6 (+2 AP
Veracruz, Mexico, 2018
MEDIUM: RA-4 color darkroom print
SIZE: H 60 cm x W 90 cm
EDITION: 6 (+2 AP)
Veracruz, Mexico, 2018
MEDIUM: Archival pigment print on fine art rag paper
Size: H 70 cm x W 100 cm
EDITION: 6 (+2 AP)
Veracruz, Mexico 2017
MEDIUM: RA-4 color darkroom print
Size: H 30 cm x W 90 cm
Edition: 6 (2+AP)
Veracruz, Mexico, 2018
MEDIUM: RA-4 color darkroom print
SIZE: H 60 cm x W 90 cm
EDITION: 6 (+2 AP)
“Every day, I thank God when I open my window. I pray, breathe in the air, and feel life. I need to feel life—because it was given to me to live and enjoy. There were people who took away all my joy. But they can’t take the sun, the air, the sky. They can’t take the nature that God gave me. That, they cannot take.”
Veracruz, Mexico, 2018
MEDIUM: Archival pigment print on fine art rag paper
Size: H 70 cm x W 100 cm
EDITION: 6 (+2 AP)
Veracruz, Mexico, 2018
MEDIUM: Archival pigment print on fine art rag paper
SIZE: H 100 cm x W 70 cm
EDITION: 6 (+2 AP)
Veracruz, Mexico, 2018
MEDIUM: Archival pigment print on fine art rag paper
SIZE: H 30 cm W 21 cm
EDITION: 6 (+2 AP)
Veracruz, Mexico, 2018
MEDIUM: RA-4 color darkroom print
SIZE: H 60 cm x W 90 cm
EDITION: 6 (+2 AP)
Veracruz, Mexico, 2017
MEDIUM: Archival pigment print on fine art rag paper
Size: H 100 cm x W 70 cm
EDITION: 6 (+2 AP)
Cordoba, Mexico, 2018
MEDIUM: RA-4 color darkroom print
SIZE: H 60 cm x W 90 cm
EDITION: 6 (+2 AP)
Veracruz, Mexico, 2018
MEDIUM: RA-4 color darkroom print
SIZE: H 60 cm x W 90 cm
EDITION: 6 (+2 AP)
Veracruz, Mexico, 2018
MEDIUM: RA-4 color darkroom print
SIZE: H 60 cm x W 90 cm
EDITION: 6 (+2 AP)
Veracruz, Mexico, 2018
MEDIUM: RA-4 color darkroom print
SIZE: H 60 cm x W 90 cm
EDITION: 6 (+2 AP)
Veracruz, Mexico, 2017
MEDIUM: RA-4 color darkroom print
Size: H 70 cm x W 100 cm
EDITION: 6 (+2 AP)
Veracruz, Mexico, 2018
MEDIUM: RA-4 color darkroom print
SIZE: Height: 60 cm Width: 90 cm
EDITION: 6 (+2 AP)
“That pain already has its place. It’s part of you now—internal, immovable. I can’t lose it. It’s what I have left of my son. It’s his place. It’s painful, but it’s his. And I’m going to keep it. When I find him, I’ll put something else there.”
Veracruz, Mexico, 2018
MEDIUM: RA-4 color darkroom print
SIZE: H 60 cm x W 90 cm
EDITION: 6 (+2 AP)
Veracruz, Mexico 2017
MEDIUM: Archival pigment print on fine art rag paper
Size: H 70 cm x W 100 cm
Edition: 6 (2+AP)
“Colinas is a place of terror, of death. But it’s becoming a sanctuary—a place where many souls rest, or used to rest, because we’ve already rescued several. After so much terror and death, something good begins to emerge.“
Landscape as Witness
Only Have Faith emerges from a geography marked by violence, absence, and endurance. Developed around the mass graves of Veracruz and the women of Colectivo Solecito who search for their disappeared loved ones, the series examines the profound relationship between land, body, and memory. The environment is not merely a backdrop to human suffering—it is a participant, a witness, and a repository of trauma. The clandestine graves that scar the landscape of Veracruz represent a violation of the earth itself. The soil becomes a site of concealment, where histories, bodies, and futures are buried. Yet this physical violence against the land mirrors another geography of harm: the bodies and minds of the women who live with the consequences of disappearance. Their grief, anxiety, resilience, and persistence are inscribed into their own landscapes of flesh and memory. In Only Have Faith, the terrain and the human body become inseparable. The disturbed earth echoes psychological wounds; excavated ground reflects the ongoing labor of mourning. As mothers search the land for traces of their children, they simultaneously navigate an internal landscape shaped by loss and hope. Their bodies carry the weight of a violence that extends beyond the grave, just as the earth carries the traces of what has been hidden within it. The series proposes that the environment is not only nature, but also history, community, and collective memory. By focusing on landscapes, testimonies, and acts of care rather than graphic depictions of violence, Only Have Faith reveals how both land and people endure violation while remaining sites of resistance. The women of El Solecito restore dignity to the disappeared through acts of recovery, transforming spaces of death into spaces of remembrance and connection. Because of the mothers, the disappeared remain present. Because of one another, faith persists. In this sense, Only Have Faith embodies that there is no separation between self and surroundings: the body is a landscape, the landscape is a body, and both bear witness to what has happened there.
Mothers day demonstration
Veracruz, Mexico 2017
Medium: RA-4 color darkroom print
Size: H 60 cm x W 90 cm
Edition: 6 (2+AP)
Veracruz, Mexico 2017
Medium: RA-4 color darkroom print
Size: H 60 cm x W 90 cm
Edition: 6 (2+AP)
Veracruz, Mexico 2018
MEDIUM: Archival pigment print on fine art rag paper
Size: H 70 cm x W 100 cm
Edition: 6 (2+AP)
MEDIUM: Archival pigment print on fine art rag paper
Size: H 70 cm x W 100 cm
Edition: 6 (2+AP)
Mothers excavating Colinas de Santa Fe
Veracruz, Mexico 2018
Medium: RA-4 color darkroom print
Size: H 60 cm x W 90 cm
Edition: 6 (2+AP)
Veracruz, Mexico 2018
Medium: RA-4 color darkroom print
Size: H 60 cm x W 90 cm
Edition: 6 (2+AP)