Photographer Txema Rodríguez discovers the lesser-known Holy Week in La Malagueta

This Tuesday, the Cultural Center La Malagueta inaugurates the exhibition 'An Inner Journey', a project where photographer Txema Rodríguez offers an immersion into the Holy Week celebrations of the province from an intimate perspective, moving away from the usual narratives focused on the capital. The exhibition, which can be visited until May 17, gathers images from nine municipalities—Cómpeta, Casarabonela, Antequera, Vélez-Málaga, Archidona, Coín, Frigiliana, Arriate, and Cartajima—with the aim of exploring how this tradition is experienced in different local realities.

Far from being a classic documentary exercise, the project constructs a visual narrative that focuses on the emotional and everyday aspects. This is captured in the exhibition text: "Holy Week is, in addition to a religious event, a social and cultural phenomenon that spreads across every corner of the province of Málaga." A phenomenon that manifests differently in each locality, forming a mosaic of sensitivities immortalized here in black and white.

"Holy Week is a social and cultural phenomenon that spreads across every corner of the province of Málaga"

Through processions, gatherings, music, prayers, and seemingly minor scenes, 'An Inner Journey' articulates "a portrait of its inhabitants and their desires," where the collective and the individual intertwine. The images pause on gestures, glances, and atmospheres that reveal a more introspective dimension of the tradition. The project itself is defined as a window to what makes each celebration unique and, at the same time, connects them, "a journey through nine Holy Weeks, seeking, through its gaze, that which makes them unique and that which, at the same time, unites them."

The catalog accompanying the exhibition emphasizes this emotional and symbolic dimension. Antonio Javier López, director of the Cultural Center La Malagueta and La Térmica, asserts that Rodríguez's work does not seek to document but to interpret, proposing an experience that goes beyond visual recording to the realm of memory, identity, and shared time. Because Rodríguez's work moves between the documentary and the poetic, between observation and involvement.

The exhibition includes scenes such as the departure of the Green Christ of Antequera along with others taken at different points in the province, forming a fragmented yet coherent narrative about the experience of Holy Week. The vice president and deputy of Culture, Manuel López Mestanza, has highlighted that this exhibition "allows us to remember that the importance and richness of this celebration are not limited to the capital, but also have a fundamental weight in numerous interior municipalities where it is lived with an identity and particularities of its own that also form part of the cultural heritage of Málaga."

Rodríguez proposes a look that moves away from the spectacular to delve into the essential: the shared experience

The deputy also explained that this is the first exhibition of La Malagueta that is directly projected towards the province, as its author and the Province of Málaga will donate to each of the nine municipalities included in the exhibition the images of their Holy Week captured in the project.

Txema Rodríguez holds a degree in Information Sciences from the University of Navarra. He began his photography career in 2006 and has since developed a career that combines the artistic field with photojournalism. He has worked as a graphic editor at Las Provincias de Valencia between 2010 and 2025 and is currently part of the team at ABC. His work has been exhibited in cities such as Valencia, Madrid, London, and Basel and is included in the book '100 Great Street Photographs', published by Prestel/Random House. In 2025, he received the International Mingote Award for an image taken after the floods in Valencia.

With 'An Inner Journey', Rodríguez proposes a look that moves away from the spectacular to delve into the essential: the shared experience, the rites that are repeated and transformed, and the ability of images to capture, albeit fleetingly, that which defines a municipality.

The exhibition, accessible from gate 9, can be visited from Tuesday to Friday from 9:00 to 14:00 and from 16:00 to 18:00, and on weekends from 11:00 to 14:00 and from 15:00 to 18:00.