Young men jump from rocks into the bright blue sea. They laugh as they cannonball into the depths, emerging again, ripe with the thrill of the plunge. It’s this simple pleasure that forms the recurring motif of Jose Lorrüe’s ongoing visual essay ‘El Salto’. The Barcelona-based photographer began shooting the Moroccan youth he met on the shores his home city in 2022. “I was drawn to the way they had fun and related to one another. I started spending my afternoons with them. Over time, a bond of trust formed, and they shared their personal stories with me,” Lorrüe recalls. “This made me question my right to photograph them. I was aware of my position of privilege and of the distance between our lived experiences. It was then that the act of jumping into the water gradually took on a symbolic meaning: a way of drawing closer to one another and of sharing the same space beyond our differences.”

After two years of deepening his relationship with this community and hearing their reminisces of home, Lorrüe went to Morocco to travel across the coastal towns and cities and get to know more young people. And through these encounters, both on and off camera, they revealed their myriad dreams, memories and ambitions. “I met people who do not want to migrate, others who are fortunate enough to return and reunite with their families, and those who wish to leave, or who have tried to do so without success,” he reflects. “Since then, jumping has been a constant companion: a way of holding space for collective desires and hopes.”

The humanistic images and short film that have emerged, a mix of candid moments, collaboratively constructed portraits and intimate testimonies, swell with dignity and agency. And crucially, they present a shared sea that blurs the boundaries between places and peoples. Mothers wait on the beach. Footballs fly, mint tea brews. Girls giggle amongst friends, boys cartwheel into the shallows. And the viewer is left not needing to know which side of the Mediterranean is in view. This ambiguity reminds that we are not ‘here’ or ‘there’. We are not ‘us’ or ‘them’. And we are all able to be tempted to leap into the unknown.

“My interest has always been in moving beyond the abstract figure of ‘the migrant’ and engaging with people as individuals, each with their own experiences, aspirations and contradictions,” Lorrüe says. “So, this series does not seek to present a single narrative. Rather I hope to reveal the complex and nuanced stories that often remain unheard.”