The Espais d’Art Urbà are filled with portraits and everyday scenes with the group exhibition ‘Benidorm at street level’

The open-air exhibition spaces scattered throughout different neighbourhoods of Benidorm, grouped under the name of Urban Art Spaces, are hosting a new photography exhibition starting this Thursday. The exhibition will be open until October, and it turns the city itself into both the setting and the protagonist. "Benidorm at Street Level" is the title of this group exhibition, created by students from the Mistos Photography School and inaugurated this morning by Mayor Toni Pérez; the Councilor for Historical and Cultural Heritage, Ana Pellicer; and the school's director, José Luis Carrillo, accompanied by some of the exhibitors and other members of the municipal council.

The exhibition consists of 53 photographs ranging from portraiture, featuring city shopkeepers, residents, and tourists; to images of spaces and architectural elements, to "propose a collective vision that is articulated around portraiture and the careful observation of urban space as a place of encounter, transit, and social representation" and "to approach the city of Benidorm not from a touristic exoticism or visual caricature, but from a commitment to reality, to the people who inhabit and transit it."

During the opening, the director of the Mistos school explained the creation process of this group exhibition, carried out by 16 of the 25 students who participated in the Author Photography and Personal Perspective course. "The course runs for a year, and at the end, a group exhibition is held, which this year was decided to be about Benidorm," for which "they made a first visit to get to know the city, since many of them had never been here and only knew Benidorm from what they had seen or heard." José Luis Carrillo stated that the students, who came from all over Spain, “were surprised by the multiculturalism and modernity of this city, the diversity of the people who live here, and the good coexistence between people of different generations and cultures,” which they later attempted to capture in every one of their works on a second trip to photograph.

The exhibition coordinator also explained that, in addition to the photography work, the days in Benidorm and the resulting exhibition also helped the artists “change their prior perspective on Benidorm and break with many of the stereotypes they had brought from home,” championing photography “as a tool not only to record what we see, but also to understand and interpret the social richness that dwells in this city.”

Finally, Carrillo thanked the City Council for its support and expressed his conviction that this exhibition will almost certainly be “the most visited in the history of Mistos.”

Mayor Toni Pérez applauded the initiative of making Benidorm the setting for the final project of the school's 25 students, who "while training, have also been ambassadors of this vision of Benidorm from within to show it to the world." The mayor also referred to "the opportunity that Benidorm offers these artists to have an exhibition of their street-level photographs, which millions of eyes will be able to see, starting today, and reflect on."

For the mayor, this "Benidorm at street level" "fits perfectly with the city model we believe in, also linked to this training, and which reflects a fundamental aspect of the portrait: the depth of our productive fabric, putting a face to the people who are on the street every day to open their businesses, promoting life on our streets and, also, making that life happen on foot, through incredible panels of that multicultural, welcoming, and opportunity-filled Benidorm."

Finally, the Councilor for Historical and Cultural Heritage, Ana Pellicer, explained that "as fate would have it, this exhibition shares its name with the municipal campaign, A pie de calle (On the Street)," promoted by the Departments of Citizen Participation and Public Space to "tap into the needs of Benidorm residents, many of which were linked to public facilities in different neighborhoods." She also emphasised that both that campaign and this exhibition "draw from the same inspiration: the human and the urban," and that "it is also at street level that people will be able to see all these works, in that great open-air museum that is Benidorm with its Urban Art Spaces."

The councillor noted that the 53 photographs that make up the exhibition can be visited at six of these Espais d'Art: El Carrasco, El Pont, Hispanitat, El Campo, Ponent, and Els Tolls, until next October, and invited the public to "visit and enjoy it."