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Gonzalo García Pino
Every boxing match is a story. A silent drama. The photographs of Alberto García-Alix are also condensed stories, a mute but eloquent narration: images impregnated with the naked lyricism of artifices. Direct poetry which arises, flashing like the crack of a whip, and always finds a place for itself in the photo frame: a hand, the tip of a shoe, a look, a wound, a black cat darting off... Poetry, yes, but also epic. A fighter by vocation, when García-Alix completes one of his entertaining fights with his images only the winner is left in the ring: his eye, a direct eye, the eye of a fighter. (…) Since he put on his first individual exhibition at the Buades Gallery in December 1981, Alberto García-Alix's career reached a high point in 1998, with the retrospective anthology of his work exhibited at the Círculo de Bellas Artes. After submerging themselves in a universe of nearly 95,000 negatives, the curators of this outstanding exhibition, Mireia Sentís and José Luis Gallero, selected 150 works. A mere mention of these numbers gives us a precise idea of the laborious project undertaken by the photographer over his twenty years of career; a project which received recognition in the year 2000 with the National Photography Prize. (…) - There is a characteristic which stands out in your photographs and that is the sensation of naturalness which they transmit.... More than seeking naturalness, what I seek with my photographs is what I call 'virtue'. To achieve this I always seek the face of my subject, fixing his or her eyes on a point which will be correspond to the eye of the spectator, so that the spectator is also observed by the image. That is the mystery of photography for me, its virtue: that is, that the image should observe the spectator. - Following that line of reasoning, would the eye of the spectator then be the eye which finally gives meaning to the photograph that is appearing? It is not entirely true that photography has no soul in itself. Obviously the spectator contributes a sense of agreement with the guidelines or cultural models he has experienced. A man in 1700 would see a Velazquez with different eyes from the ones I see it with today. But in any case, there is a moment when a photograph (we're talking about a photograph with a certain degree of quality) breathes on its own account, independently of the interpretation of the person looking at it. - Has there been any unusual moment in your life which marked the start of your fascination with photography? There is always a moment at which one begins to feel trapped by what one does, by what one likes. It's usually said that a good teacher is one who's capable of making us love what we're being taught. In my case, as I am self-taught, the fascination began in the lab, in those magic moments developing, when the image of something that I had already previously seen begins to appear on the paper. Later, from that initial interest, two determining events occurred in my life as a photographer: the two exhibitions which I saw in Madrid in 1981. One was the exhibition by August Sander at the German Institute, and when I saw the work of this photographer, I was absolutely sure about one thing.... What was I sure about...? It's difficult to verbalise but, generalising a great deal, I can tell you that there I understood the power of photography. Those tramps photographed by Sander, the German businessmen, seeing the faces of those men I understood German society of the time and I was absolutely sure at that moment of the power of an intentioned eye, and that photography also participates in what we commonly understand as a work of art. (…)
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