About This Project

Oskar Alvarado

Where Fireflies Unfold

Where Fireflies Unfold is a long-term project that began in 2016 and has been finished by 2022 and consists of approximately 55 color photographs. The initial idea was to be able to have an exhibition body of a certain magnitude and the possibility of making out a photobook. 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.

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