Felipe Romero Beltrán is a photographer whose practice is characterized by his interest in social matters. The artist’s process is typically structured around long-term documentary projects that require extensive research on their subjects. For example, Beltrán’s work Magdalena (2017) considers the Colombian civil war that ended in 2016. The bodies of many of the victims killed during the war were thrown in the Magdalena River, which is a vital water source fundamental to the nation. For years, those fishing in the river have found body parts caught in their nets. With this in mind, the local populations have practiced religious rituals to gain the favor of the dead. The story that Beltrán portrays through his work merges these magical practices with the practical realities of reconciliation and healing. The remarkable sensitivity with which Romero Beltran captures his subjects may have something to do with his own precarious path as an immigrant from South America to Europe, via a major detour to the Middle East. He arrived at the Bezable Art School in 2014 in Jerusalem and spent a year and half there taking quizzical pictures of blocked streets and barricaded houses, another form of violence to which he had been exposed during the civil war in his home country of Colombia.