The images accompany a trio of voices at photoAlicante, a decade‑long photography festival that returns with energy after the pandemic. In the sunlit plazas of Alicante, bronze sculptures and vivid street scenes set the tone for an exhibition that travels from the central market to the Rambla, inviting visitors to look up, around, and into the human moments that define city life. The festival runs through early April, inviting the public to pause and watch life unfold on street corners, stairwells, and windows of a lively urban quarter.
One thread follows a photographer who makes sense of living by capturing the emotional tempo of ordinary days. The work centers on kinship and ritual, turning family gatherings into intimate performances. The photographer has spent years documenting friends and relatives as they celebrate passages large and small, revealing the humor and tenderness that sit at the core of everyday life. The project titled takes a lyrical look at how people relate to time, memory, and shared rituals. The narrator explains that the series treats life as a fragile thread, subtle and luminous, woven through ordinary celebrations that briefly illuminate the vast sweep of history.
Photographs from Reyes Pe, titled a collection of many years, are presented in the Casa de la Festa in Alicante. The work captures the social fabric of street life, the color of gatherings, and the warmth of faces at moments of joy. The festival presents these images as a testament to a photographer who finds meaning in the quiet details of communal joy and personal ritual, offering a window into the human side of the city. The imagery is anchored by the sense of place, the way light meets stone, and the candid emotions that surface when friends, family, and neighbors come together to celebrate.
Another highlight of the festival is a contribution from a young photographer who explores the intersection of realism and absurdity. The collection titled The realism of the absurd invites viewers to consider scenes where logic seems suspended and whimsy takes the lead. The artist chooses surreal elements to illuminate how life often mixes the ordinary with the extraordinary, suggesting that understanding existence may require embracing both the real and the fantastical in harmony. The work speaks to a broader question about perception and truth in contemporary photography, inviting active contemplation from the audience.
Presented on the steps of a historic observatory, the work by Maravillas Espín demonstrates a striking blend of rigor and play. The series, called The realism of the absurd, invites a closer look at how humor and imagery can pry open new ways of seeing the everyday. The photographs reveal a twenty‑year‑old voice that refuses to shrink from bold, imaginative scenarios, using visual tricks and thoughtful composition to convey a sense that the world is not always as orderly as it appears. The artist contends that art thrives when reason and whimsy live in the same frame, challenging viewers to reconsider what counts as credible truth in an image.
In another corner of the festival, a new family odyssey unfolds in The life of a family of three sisters. The narrative follows a mother who dreams of stardom and a punk aunt who disrupts the quiet with sly humor. The project blends documentary realism with imaginative storytelling, weaving remembered moments with imagined futures. The photographer crafts stories by assembling images that inspire later narration, using a mix of fact and fiction to create a lively, almost picaresque sense of character. This body of work keeps playful energy at its heart even as it navigates themes of ambition, memory, and resilience. The show notes that the imagery often serves as the seed for larger stories that unfold in subsequent projects, inviting viewers to track the evolution across time and siblings’ lives.