Joan Alvado Explores Beliefs and Landscape Through Nightly Baptisms and Deserted Realms
Joan Alvado, the Altea born photographer known for immersive projects across diverse locales, spent five weeks in Portugal on the Alto Miño. His aim was to deepen his understanding of Galicia, its people, and the beliefs that shape their daily lives. The journey also explored shepherding traditions, Cuban Muslim communities, and solitary landscapes that echo a distant, Martian feel. This new body of work will debut on September 17 at Encontros da Imagem, Portugal’s foremost contemporary photography festival, celebrating its 32nd edition in Braga under the theme Common Places and running from September 16 to October 30.
Earlier in the year, the project was presented in a show titled Last Man on Earth at the Huete Photography Museum, part of the Antonio Pérez Foundation, in Cuenca. The exhibit will travel to Spain’s most populous regions, bringing these remote reveries into close contact with urban audiences.
Alvado explains his intent to exhibit in Cuenca because it is a place he photographed during the course of creating this work. He has spent years in Barcelona and recently toured the Serranía Celtiberica. The new show will include thirty to forty photographs that reveal an almost Martian landscape, a visual outcome of a long journey where he reimagines a region through a sequence of begun and completed images.
This project earned an honorable mention in the POY Latam photography awards and reached the finals of the Galician Contemporary Photography Prize and the La Gacilly Festival, among other recognitions. The work has also appeared in leading publications such as El País, Leica Fotografie International, and Bird in Flight Magazine from Ukraine.
Inspired by the previous studies, the Portuguese art and architecture studio FAHR 021.3, known for land art, invited Alvado to undertake an artistic residency in northern Portugal. The artist described the area as a mystical place where geographical isolation shapes local beliefs. The residency lasted five weeks in the municipality of Arcos de Valdevez, near Peneda-Gerês Natural Park and close to the Galician border.
As in the Last Man on Earth project, Alvado began without a concrete plan, allowing the work to unfold. He found a region rich in symbolism and spiritual practices through the help of a local guide. He encountered communities engaged in dialogue with the afterlife, including rituals where the living communicate with the dead, perform exorcisms, or cleanse homes to protect them. This encounter became a core element of the new project, shaping a narrative that blends landscape with the beliefs of its inhabitants.
The resulting series, Midnight Baptisms, centers on an ancient ritual designed to assist expectant mothers. The Encontros da Imagem festival will feature this spiritual and symbolic journey that examines how nature and isolation influence beliefs. The photographs capture a landscape and its people, crafting an intangible realm that translates into a powerful photographic language.
Alvado emphasizes the importance of avoiding prejudice. He notes that these beliefs are often dismissed and ridiculed, yet some practices persist beyond rational explanation because science cannot fully account for them. The project sits between imaginative storytelling and ethnographic study, presenting beliefs that some might call folklore while showing how they continue through generations.