Série - FotoSlovo 2026 - Category « Photographie expérimentale »

‘I want to believe’ addresses our longing to escape into fictional worlds and surrendering to the unexplained.

The series combines two at first very different Spanish regions: the Andalusian desert Tabernas, a historic production site for western films; and the Catalan monastery and mountain range Montserrat, which is a site of Marian apparitions, religious pilgrimage and alleged UFO-Hotspot. The narratives created around both places, whether they are religious promises or the semblance of a fictional movie world, become real by people believing in them. The human urge to be enchanted and convinced by fictional narratives thus unites both locations.

The photographs move between fiction and reality by emphasizing paranormal and religious symbols and science-fiction references. A new imaginary landscape is built, where the original locations are not revealed by any identifiable characteristics. By using the western atmosphere of the Andalusian desert and it's prop buildings and landscapes, the series appears as though it might have been produced in the United States.

In an era of shifting discourse, where personal beliefs often carry more weight than verifiable facts, the series also raises the question of how stories, images, and circulating narratives come to hold authority. The work thus extends beyond the two landscapes depicted and touches on a fundamental question: how we navigate visual worlds whose origins, intentions, and truths remain uncertain.