THE STAGE WE ALL SHARE - From Chaos and Celebration to Living Portraits of Humanity

Photography, at its best, reveals not only what we see but how we live. For Francisco Malave, the act of photographing is inseparable from the act of being present with people, whether in a nightclub at 2 a.m. or at the heart of the streets, his images are less about freezing moments than about transmitting the energy contained within them.

This sensibility was sharpened in Chicago, a city that demands adaptability. Each setting asks for a different voice: gentle patience at a march, playful banter on the

dance floor, quiet confidence in the streets. These shifts in approach have given Francisco more than technical skill; they’ve given him emotional intelligence. His

photographs are not only records of faces and gestures, but echoes of encounters built on trust, spontaneity, and connection.

The work draws strength from contrasts. In one frame, sequins shimmer under colored lights, bodies pressed close in a blur of sound and movement. In another, just

capturing the human soul amid the chaos of the street or the night, raw emotion etched into their features.

Francisco does not separate these worlds; he sees them as part of the same continuum. Joy and pain, comedy and tragedy, spectacle and struggle: all are

performances of human existence, staged in the open for those willing to look.

He credits his artistic eye to influences as varied as comic books, Andy Warhol, and the uncompromising vision of photographers like Bruce Gilden and Robert Capa. But

what grounds his work is not imitation, it is immersion.

To watch Francisco shoot is to see someone who cannot resist the pull of life around him. He is not detached; he is in it, moving with the crowd, absorbing the rhythm of

the room, waiting for the precise instant when personality crystallizes into image.

At the core of his practice lies an almost confessional truth: he cannot imagine life without a camera.

That devotion translates into photographs that breathe with urgency. They are less artifacts than extensions of Francisco himself, charged, restless, impossible to

ignore.

His upcoming book, “FUKIN BANGERZ!”, channels this raw vitality into a visual manifesto of nightlife. As his work, it will be loud, unapologetic, and fiercely human, a testament to the fact that photography need not whisper when it can roar.

In Francisco Malavé’s world, every image is part of a larger stage play, the ongoing theater of being alive together.

To see his work is to recognize ourselves: radiant, fragile, contradictory, and always in motion.

“Our highs and our lows both hold high energy. My goal will always be to capture both.” Francisco Maleve