Hola Mi Amol

Artist: Karla Hiraldo Voleau

Publisher: SPBH Editions (2019)

French Dominican photographer Karla Hiraldo Voleau (born 1992) grew up with one constant warning: “Never date a Dominican.” In Hola Mi Amol, Hiraldo Voleau returns to the Dominican Republic to cast her gaze on the bodies of the many men she meets, mostly men working in the tourism trade. There, she explores desire, sex and love in this luscious, tender and sexy debut. Her sensual, unstaged, mostly nude photos of the men she connects with are punctuated by vulnerable self-portraits of their intimate encounters. Accompanied by short texts, Hola Mi Amol unfolds into a story that is at once fierce, funny and compassionate. In the Dominican Republic without her mother, aunt or grandmother (all of whom had fallen in love, married or had a child there), and out of sight of her male relatives there, Voleau frees herself to the borders of what feels "allowed" in love, sexuality and friendship.