Bearing Witness in the Jungle
Federico Ríos Escobar is a Colombian photojournalist born in 1980 whose decade-long body of work has established him as one of Latin America’s most respected visual chroniclers of conflict, migration, and the fraught relationship between society and territory. A regular contributor to The New York Times, Ríos Escobar is best known for his sustained documentation of the Darién Gap, one of the world’s most dangerous migration routes. His photo essay Paths of Desperate Hope, Crossing the Darién Gap, produced with journalist Julie Turkewitz, follows migrants on foot through mud, swollen rivers, and violence in the jungle separating Colombia and Panama.
Photo credit: Facebook Page Federico Ríos Escobar
His work has earned some of photojournalism’s highest honors, including the Humanitarian Visa d’Or (ICRC, 2023), LFI Latin America Photographer of the Year (2023), and a World Press Photo 2025 win in the Long-Term Projects category. He is also a Pulitzer Prize finalist. In 2024 he published Darién, following his acclaimed 2020 book VERDE, on Colombia’s guerrilla conflict.
We’re pleased to share that Ríos Escobar will be contributing photographs to our upcoming exhibit at The Latin American Cultural Center, Crossroads of the World: Panama. His images from the Darién Gap will offer visitors a firsthand visual account of one of the region’s most urgent and human stories.
Read more about Darién.