Artist: Paco Martí

Title: Taronja

Date: 2023

Technique: Photography

Materials: Ilford Galerie Prestige Gold Fibre Silk baryta paper. Fine Art Giclée print with Ultrachrome PRO12 pigment inks.

Dimensions: 28 × 35 cm

Todolí Citrus Fundació Collection

Donated by the artist

The photograph Taronja is part of the project La vida sencera, published by Debacle Ediciones in 2019. Over the course of several years, Paco Martí explored the landscapes of Castellón and its surrounding area, creating an intimate portrait of the territory through images born from everyday observation.

Rather than following a preconceived plan, Martí photographs what he encounters during his regular walks. He returns time and again to the same places, attentive to subtle transformations in the landscape and to those elements capable of revealing an unexpected beauty. His gaze transforms the everyday into a poetic experience, inviting the viewer to pause and observe with the same quiet attention with which the photographs were made.

The photograph depicts a prefabricated fibreglass kiosk in the shape of a giant orange, located beside a citrus warehouse in Burriana. Originally designed as a commercial advertisement, the structure appears detached from its usual context, taking on an almost sculptural presence. The apparent unreality of the scene prompts the viewer to wonder whether the image has been digitally manipulated or whether it is the result of a chance encounter. As in all of Martí’s work, however, the scene is entirely real.

In Taronja, the citrus fruit transcends its condition as produce to become an element of the landscape and of the collective memory of a territory deeply rooted in orange-growing culture. The photograph reveals how the symbols of agriculture and commercial activity become part of the visual imagination of the Valencian Community, where the everyday, the unexpected and the poetic coexist.

Paco Martí (Castellón de la Plana, 1956)

Paco Martí has developed a photographic practice characterised by a contemplative gaze and a profound connection to place. His images, made primarily in Castellón and its surrounding area, explore the relationship between landscape, memory and everyday life through seemingly simple scenes that reveal an extraordinary capacity for observation.

His work moves beyond straightforward documentary photography to create a visual universe in which chance, the passage of time and personal experience transform the most ordinary places into images open to multiple interpretations. As the artist himself has remarked: “I understand photography as an everyday act, like drinking, watching films or making love.”