Lys
Arango

Lys Arango

biography

Lys Arango is a Spanish documentary photographer born in Madrid and based in Paris. She joined Agence VU’ in 2023.

Motivated by social issues, she holds a degree in International Relations with a specialization in Armed Conflict and Peace Process Studies from the London School of Economics and a master’s degree in Journalism from Madrid’s Complutense University.

Since 2016, she has worked on the scene of numerous humanitarian and food emergencies around the world for international NGOs such as Action contre la Faim and Médecins Sans Frontières. In 2019, her work evolves towards a dialogue between writing and documentary photography: a framework that allows her to immerse herself at length in the social issues she tackles.

Her extensive project on hunger is divided into several chapters, each exploring a different cause of food insecurity around the world. The first, Until the Corn Grows Back (Guatemala), highlights the link between climate change and chronic malnutrition. The second, Dans le creux (France), examines the paradoxes of food poverty in a country rich in social rights. The following chapters focus on the use of hunger as a Tactic of War in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lebanon and Colombia. This work, which Lys is still pursuing today, is an investigation into one of the greatest challenges of our time.

With The River Ran Black, she spent four years documenting Asturias, the land of her paternal family, at a pivotal moment in its history. The first part is a tribute to the last miners and the end of more than two centuries of coal mining, which is following those who were the last guardians of a profession that shaped the region’s identity. The second part, produced thanks to a National Geographic Explorer grant in 2024, focuses on the resulting multifaceted transition: human transition, with the exodus of young people and the reinvention of those who remain; but also cultural, with the transformation of former mines into museums, cultural spaces or gastronomic projects; and environmental, with the conversion of mines into orchards, the rise of geothermal energy and the restoration of landscapes. Between memory, metamorphosis and the future, this work is both a return to roots and an intimate portrait of a region in search of redefinition.

His work has received major awards, such as the CCFD Terre Solidaire Prize (2025), a National Geographic Explorer Grant (2024) and Pictures of the Year Award (2023). Her photographs have been exhibited at numerous festivals, including Les Femmes s’exposent (Normandy, France), Galerie Leica, Horizonte Festival (Zingst, Germany), Zoom Festival (Quebec, Canada), Helsinki Photo Festival (Finland) and Yeast Photo Festival (Puglia, Italy), and is published by international media.

Series

Dans le creux, 2022-2023

Series | They wait in a square, as they do every day, to receive the food aid parcel offered by an association. They include families, single men and women, the elderly and students.

The river ran black: The end of the coal, 2020-2022

Series | My father grew up in these narrow valleys surrounded by mountains, where the river ran black and where the sound of the siren announced the descent of the workers into the depths of the Earth.

Xiximai, 2021

Series | Xiximai, the goddess of famine, visits the houses of the Ch'orti 'Mayan people every year on the first of June. Families wait for her with food otherwise, she will leave them in poverty and the corn reserves will dwindle.

Until the corn grows back, 2019-2021

Series | Climate change is destroying the harvests of hundreds of thousands of small farmers, fuelling a humanitarian crisis: in Guatemala, one child in two suffers from chronic malnutrition, the highest rate in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Dans le creux, 2022-2023

Series | They wait in a square, as they do every day, to receive the food aid parcel offered by an association. They include families, single men and women, the elderly and students.

The river ran black: The end of the coal, 2020-2022

Series | My father grew up in these narrow valleys surrounded by mountains, where the river ran black and where the sound of the siren announced the descent of the workers into the depths of the Earth.

Xiximai, 2021

Series | Xiximai, the goddess of famine, visits the houses of the Ch'orti 'Mayan people every year on the first of June. Families wait for her with food otherwise, she will leave them in poverty and the corn reserves will dwindle.

Until the corn grows back, 2019-2021

Series | Climate change is destroying the harvests of hundreds of thousands of small farmers, fuelling a humanitarian crisis: in Guatemala, one child in two suffers from chronic malnutrition, the highest rate in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Dans le creux, 2022-2023

Series | They wait in a square, as they do every day, to receive the food aid parcel offered by an association. They include families, single men and women, the elderly and students.

The river ran black: The end of the coal, 2020-2022

Series | My father grew up in these narrow valleys surrounded by mountains, where the river ran black and where the sound of the siren announced the descent of the workers into the depths of the Earth.

Xiximai, 2021

Series | Xiximai, the goddess of famine, visits the houses of the Ch'orti 'Mayan people every year on the first of June. Families wait for her with food otherwise, she will leave them in poverty and the corn reserves will dwindle.

Until the corn grows back, 2019-2021

Series | Climate change is destroying the harvests of hundreds of thousands of small farmers, fuelling a humanitarian crisis: in Guatemala, one child in two suffers from chronic malnutrition, the highest rate in Latin America and the Caribbean.

exhibition

In conversation
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Leica Gallery Madrid
Calle Ortega y Gasset 34
28006 Madrid
España
—
Exhibition from 20 March to 24 May 2025
Opening on 20 March

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Until the Corn Grows Back (Guatemala) & The River Ran Black (Asturias)
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Al Majaz amphitheatre
Al majaz 3, Sharja 82828, Emirats Arabes Unis
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Exhibition from 20 to 26 February 2025

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Awards

Terre Solidaire – CCFD Award 

For her series « While waiting for the harvest »

2025

National Geographic Explorer Grant

For her series « The River Ran Black: Spain’s Transition to Green Energy »

2024

Pictures of the Year 

1st Prize, « Environmental Vision » categorie for her series « The river ran black »

2023

Bibliothèque Nationale de France: Radioscopie de la France 

Laureate for her series « Dans le creux »

2022