The artistic legacy of Josep Maria Peñalver is on display on the first floor of the Miramar-Centre Cultural. The photographer's family has promoted this posthumous retrospective that brings together 160 photographs and allows us to follow the evolution of Peñalver's techniques and creativity. The photographs on display in the exhibition 'Instantes que perduran' (Moments that last) are analogue and digital images and allow us to contemplate very different themes such as portraits, landscapes, still lifes, architectural and artistic photography. The exhibition, inaugurated last Saturday, is a recognition of the career of this photographer, born in Barcelona, and who was a member of the Photographic section of the Sitgetans Studies Group.

The project for this exhibition began to take shape before the pandemic but was halted due to the confinement by Covid-19. Last year it was submitted to the competition for exhibition projects for the Miramar-Centre Cultural, organised by the Sitges Town Council's Department of Culture, and turned out to be one of the winning proposals.

The widow of the photographer Josep Maria Peñalver, Mercè Casadellà, assures that "both my children and myself are very happy to be able to publicly share a modest exhibition that shows the great photographic legacy so that visitors can enjoy the special sensitivity that he will always have to capture reality".

Josep Maria Peñalver y Rufas became interested in the world of photography at the age of 12 with an old Kodat Portait Brownie and a modest laboratory at home. When he finished high school, at the age of 14, he began to work in a photomechanics shop and in the evenings he studied photoengraving at the Escuela Industrial de Barcelona, which were the only studies at that time that had any connection with photography. The photographer's son, Oriol Peñalver, says that his father "never stopped pursuing his dream of being a photographer. He worked very hard to achieve his goal. And he finally managed to dedicate himself fully to his vocation".

JM Peñalver's working life lasted 49 years and was related to the world of image and communication through the publication of his images for editorial newspapers or advertising, among other fields. His work includes snapshots published between 2005-2008 in the supplement "Estilos de vida" of the newspaper La Vanguardia.

Peñalver was always in search and study of the world of the image. He never stopped researching and innovating with his photographs and shared his knowledge through courses. Throughout his career he held solo exhibitions in the mid-1970s and also many group exhibitions, including the Fotomaig exhibitions in which he shared space with other members of the Photographic Section of the Grup d'Estudis Sitgetans (GES). To complement the exhibition there are old cameras and other photographic objects.