Series - FotoSlovo 2026 - Category « Trip / Essay »

TITLE: Where Fireflies Unfold

DATE: 2016-2022

Where Fireflies Unfold is a long-term project that began in 2016 and was completed in 2022 consisting of 54 color photographs. The initial premise has been to

be able to have an exhibition body of a certain magnitude and the possibility of making a photobook once the series is finished.

This year, 2026, marls the 75th anniversary of the publication of the essay “Spanish Village” in LIFE magazine in April 1951.

STATEMENT

Deleitosa is my village. It is located in the province of Cáceres, in the region of Extremadura in Spain. Here my parents, grandparents, great grandparents and other

ancestors were born, going back through centuries of family genealogy. Deleitosa was the village that Eugene Smith chose to realize in his photographic essay

“Spanish Village” that was published in the American magazine Life on April 9, 1951.

Far from showing the perceptible appearance of Deleitosa or some of the visual references linked to what was a photographic icon of the social and economic

backwardness in Spanish rural society, my gaze has some subjective nuances linked to a series of experiences, places and personal memories. Reminiscences

that have endured as apparitions in my memory. Images that intermingle episodes that float in my imaginary with the new realities that coexist in the village.

There is an emotional need to reflect on the territory of which we are part. To explore our identity in the echo of the places that still speak to us, or in the absence-

presence of the people and beings that inhabit them. To form a visual interpretation that evokes the mystery that manifests itself in everyday rhythms, in the

poetic condition that underlies the strange.