As the party passes is the photographic exhibition by Javier Hortelano that can be seen until April at Fnac San Agustín. It is a compilation of snapshots taken at street level that move between photojournalism and social reporting and where, although it may seem like it, the failures are not the protagonists.
The exhibition proposes a visual tour of that fragile and silent territory where the party is suspended for a moment.. Far from the official noise, of the monuments that seek their climax in the flames or of the spectacular aesthetics that usually define the celebration, Hortelano directs the camera towards what happens when no one seems to be looking.
His images reveal the backstage of tradition: falleras that protect themselves from the sun or rain, improvised breaks where fatigue appears, silences that precede the parade, musicians who tune at street level, neighbors watching from their balconies as if they were attending an intimate ceremony.
They are apparently minor scenes, almost furtive, but that's where the humanity that sustains the party emerges. Each photograph captures that intermediate time in which the celebration breathes and reorganizes itself.. He is not looking for the postcard or the shine, but the minimal gesture, the lost look, the pause that reveals the intimate dimension of a collective ritual. In that space between what is happening and what is about to happen, an invisible choreography takes shape., woven by those who live the Fallas from within.
In this work, the party appears as a living organism, made of bodies that wait, of repeated routines, of links that are reaffirmed in every daily act. Hortelano thus proposes a look that shifts the focus from the spectacular to the essential.: what usually goes unnoticed, but that gives shape and meaning to the celebration. The exhibition invites you to stop and observe the identity, the memory and community that beat on the margins of the event.
