The images that make up this exhibition were taken in Santiago de los Caballeros de Guatemala, a city founded in 1541, destroyed by earthquakes and abandoned two centuries later. Since then it has been known as Arruinada or Antigua, which is the name that has prevailed. Over time, its monumental churches and baroque convents have been rebuilt and are now considered world heritage sites.

The photographic work focuses on the Passion Week. A tradition celebrated in a peculiar way in the streets of Antigua with a mixture of devotion, mystery and some touches of superciliousness. A multitude of performers abandon their daily lives for a few days to represent the liturgy in a fantastic scenery blurred by incense, engaged in a collective dramaturgy of an almost magical intensity.

The title of this exhibition refers to the past, to an ancient place and the archaic rituals that are celebrated there. The depth of the rites is reflected in the faces of the participants, in their looks and gestures, elusive as mirages, in the almost dreamlike atmosphere that surrounds them, hence the images capture, almost at random, precarious, fleeting and elusive moments. It is not in vain that the term “decisive instants” is used to refer to the miracle of photography, to the transformation of the ephemeral into the permanent, to the embodiment of shared emotions.

Ana Ramón (voice) and Sergio Menem (cello) of the María Pagés Foundation will participate in the inauguration.