Ada Trillo

Ada Trillo's latest project, La Luz de La Libertad will educate and promote the rights of LGBTQ refugees who have been granted asylum or are in the process of getting it. Dependent on COVID restrictions,  La Luz de La Libertad will become an interactive exhibit composed of conceptual photography and handwritten stories and a website providing information on the resources available in both the U.S and Mexico, in both English and Spanish.

Ada Trillo is a Philadelphia-based photographer. Born and raised in the U.S/ Mexican border region of Juarez and El Paso, her work focuses on sex trafficking, climate and violence-related international migration, and long-standing barriers of race and class. Her projects have been featured in international publications including The Guardian, Vogue, Smithsonian Magazine, and Mother Jones. Trillo’s work can be found in the Library of Congress, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and other institutional and private collections. 

Her many awards include a First Place in the Tokyo International Foto Awards (2019), a British Journal of Photography Female In Focus Best Series Award, and The Me & Eve Grant from the Center of Photographic Arts in Santa Fe (2020). Trillo’s images have been exhibited in the US, Japan, Luxembourg, Italy, England, France, and Germany. She holds degrees from the Istituto Marangoni in Milan, and Drexel University in Philadelphia. In 2021 she was accepted into Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism in the International Center of Photography in New York. 

Ada Trillo (ACG ’18) is Leeway’s 2019-2020 Visual Artist-in-Residence at Fleisher Art Memorial.

Ada will create a photo documentary series of 20 portraits of people who have immigrated to South Philadelphia from Mexico and Central America. The portraits will be shot in black and white with 35mm film and developed and printed in Fleisher’s darkroom. This residency project is a continuation of the work she began with her Art and Change Grant project documenting people living in safe houses along the US/Mexico border on their migration journeys. For this residency, she will be expanding her portrait series into the immigrant communities of South Philadelphia.

As part of this residency, Ada will also facilitate three workshops at Fleisher on documentary photography and storytelling with the aim of providing a bilingual (Spanish-English) learning environment. 

Ada’s photos document the cruelties and injustices of the failed immigration policies under the current administration, and also highlight the contributions that immigrants from South and Central America have made in the US. Ada hopes that her work continues to fuel conversations on immigrant justice through Fleisher, South Philadelphia, and beyond.

Through the use of photography and audio, Ada Trillo will tell the stories of people living in safehouses in the major border towns of Mexico. She intends to document the cruelties and injustices of the failed immigration policy under the current administration and highlight the enormous contributions that immigrants from South and Central America have made to the country. The images will be rendered in print and shown at Centro de Cultura Arte Trabajo y Educación, a family center in Norristown that promotes culture, art, work training and education.