Jhenny Rojas // Bogotá, Colombia

South America, in my opinion, is just brimming full of photo opportunities and locales. Around every corner you’re bound to run into some new adventure to get yourself in find trouble. One such location is Bogotá, Colombia - one of my favorite countries I’ve had the pleasure of visiting. 

If you’ve been following along this blog for a while, it might seem that with every ballerina there’s a “first” of some sorts. ‘The first that I reached out to’, ‘the first that I photographed’, ‘the first that inspired me to turn this into a project’, ‘the first that introduced to me the love of hats’, etc, etc, etc. Well Jhenny just happens to be the first ballerina that I reached out to internationally that I scheduled a shoot date with. 

Once I knew I was going to be in South America for a few weeks, I picked a few cities to visit - and cities where I could obtain work in. Bogotá and Medellin were two Colombian cities that I had contacts in, and I then looked to add ballerinas in each city. At this point in the project, there was no project. I had reached out to B.A. (from Buenos Argentina, or bad a$$, whichever you prefer) Marisol, who as we learned a few weeks ago, was the one who encouraged me to start this project, but that first shoot wasn’t scheduled yet. Jhenny surprisingly said yes, before I had even had a body of work to show, outside of two random (yet beautiful) shoots I had already done. 

Walking with Jhenny around the Usaquen neighborhood of Bogotá, we stumbled upon the back of this open transport truck, with it’s driver just having left to deliver a box of fresh passion fruit - the foundation for my favorite Colombian fruit drink, jugo de maracuyá. Looking around, I suggested that she jump up and sit in the back. “Are you kidding? No way, we’ll get in trouble” she exclaims as her eyes devilishly light up with a knowing grin. Little did I know that I would be photographing ballerinas around the world soon enough, mischievously getting into trouble, doing whatever it takes to get an image. Besides making this image, I introduced Jhenny to the world of Forrest Gump, and the proper way to say her name, Jhennnnnnnny. 

March 9, 2018