Vanessa Ahlsborn: The Machete Project

88 machetes. 16 countries.

“I started collecting machete-style knives in 2006 during my backpacking trips. After a few years of amassing sharp metals as souvenirs, I decided to start documenting the people that I met on my travels, and the Machete Project grew from there.

The Machete Project is an ongoing portrait and object archive that showcases the diversity of this blade style and the beauty of its users. Despite their fearsome reputation in western news media and popular culture, the machete is an extremely versatile and commonplace asset for many people across the world. By documenting the everyday user for whom the machete is an invaluable tool, the project seeks to question the viewer’s assumptions about the machete, and by extension, the people who use it.” – Vanessa Ahlsborn.

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