Pérez Siquier. Fundación Mapfre Collections

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Image courtesy of KBr Fundación MAPFRE.

Over the course of more than six decades, Carlos Pérez Siquier (1930–2021) built a singular body of work that transformed the way photography was understood in Spain. Working from Almería—far from the major artistic centers—he developed an intuitive and committed vision that broke away from the dominant models of his time. In a country marked by the cultural isolation of the postwar period and the dictatorship, he founded, together with José María Artero, the Almerian Photographic Association (AFAL), a collective that became a key reference for modernity and established a decisive dialogue between Spanish photographers and international movements. His first major series, La Chanca, begun in 1956 and influenced by cinematic neorealism, documents the daily life of a marginalized neighborhood with surprising dignity and closeness. These images did not seek to denounce, but rather to reveal the human vitality of a place seemingly suspended in time.

In the 1960s, Pérez Siquier made a decisive break by working in color at a pioneering moment—an approach that was initially met with incomprehension. In Informalisms, he explored painterly textures and abstractions, while in The Beach and Traps for the Unwary, he observed with irony, precision, and subtle humor how new leisure habits were transforming the Spanish coastline. His final projects, Encounters and La Briseña, more introspective in nature, distill a gaze attuned to the intimate rhythms of everyday life. Brought together in a single exhibition, these stages trace a comprehensive journey through the work of an artist who knew how to find the extraordinary within the ordinary, and who played a decisive role in the modernization of 20th‑century Spanish photography.

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