Alberto García-Álix

Self-Portrait with Wounded Body (1981)

The work of Alberto García-Alix, winner of Spain’s National Photography Award in 1999, is proof that photography is not a universal language. Its understanding requires a viewer who is willing to decipher it, and this will happen the moment we feel the photograph is speaking directly to us.

García-Alix’s self-portrait tells us the story of a night out at El Sol night club in Madrid. When bodies began to stir in the heat of the night, Alberto and his friends came into conflict with the Guerrilleros de Cristo Rey (Warriors of Christ the King). After the brawl, the photographer realized that he was bleeding profusely from a stab wound; the doctor who treated him that night was blunt: “Don’t stop smoking Fortuna”. That pack of cigarettes, which he kept in his back pocket, deflected the trajectory of a stab that could have cost him his life.

In order to narrate peripheral social realities, you must first walk through them: live in the uncomfortable and borderline corners from which others flee. Because photography, in one of its uses, is capable of creating a map of the person behind the camera. Alberto is found in each of his photographs. Photography is memory chained to a black and white. It is a way of looking at the world and this, in his case, becomes a way of being.

Alberto García Alix

León, 1956

Self-taught, a great portrait photographer, and a photographer of sometimes harsh images, determined to capture reality, García-Alix has immortalized notable artists of the time with his Leica and Hasselblad cameras. Music, the night, tattoos and motorbikes have been some of his sources of inspiration, which he has always treated in black and white. The passing of the years has led his work down more introspective and intimate paths. He won Spain’s National Photography Award in 1999.

Alberto García-Álix
© Alberto García Alix, VEGAP, Madrid, 2019

Este sitio web utiliza cookies para que usted tenga la mejor experiencia de usuario. Si continúa navegando está dando su consentimiento para la aceptación de las mencionadas cookies y la aceptación de nuestra política de cookies, pinche el enlace para mayor información. ACEPTAR

Aviso de cookies