PARIS.- To celebrate twenty years of collaboration, kamel mennour presented Alberto García-Alix’s fourth solo show at the gallery, which started on December 8th, 2022, and will end on January 28th, 2023.

Alberto García-Alix begins to photograph his life and his surroundings at a historic turning point for Spain: following the death of the dictator Franco, the democratic transition proved to be a time of great political, social and cultural turmoil. Self-taught, he bears witness to his own life and the world around him: an eager youth yearning for freedom. Over a decade, Madrid becomes the birthplace and home to this upheaval. La Movida triggers an outburst. A youthful convulsion takes shape and paves the way towards modernity that will, in time, affect all layers of Spanish society. His compositions, with their striking diagonals and contrasts of light, are orchestrated with patience and skill. His gaze is always frontal, direct, confrontational.

My relationship with Kamel Mennour began in spring 2001. He invited me to exhibit at 60 rue Mazarine alongside Nobuyoshi Araki, Roger Ballen, Peter Beard, Larry Clark, Pierre Molinier, Jan Saudek, Stephen Shore and Zineb Sedira.

Lo que queda por venir [What is yet to come] celebrates the twenty years of our relationship andfriendship, through some oftheimages thatmarked thebeginning ofour shared adventure.

The works presented are vintage prints, mostly artist proofs. They carry the atmosphere of the days when they were made. An atmosphere from which I can’t escape. Nor can I faIl to read in them my vocation as a photographer. Time gives us perspective. I have done nothing but portray what is my own, my world. A world that is always evolving.

A gaze can be trained. Taking photographs is an exercise in the present moment. But photography does not capture it as such. It is a transmission of the past... It chains my memory and exposes it to the light. The melancholic emotion of the unavoidable becomes visible and brings it back to the present. These images have that power: to transmit the past, exist in the present and resonate still. Always alive... A timeless emotion.




The exhibition Lo que queda por venir functions as an echo, A resonance of this idea and–following the natural course of events–it will also be what is yet to come, the future. — Alberto García-Alix

Born in León (1956), ALBERTO GARCÍA-ALIX moves to Madrid at the age of eleven. He receives his first camera in 1975, a Canon FTB, as a Christmas gift from his parents. From the very start, more than a hobby, photography is a vocation. He begins to photograph his life and his surroundings at a historic turning point for Spain: following the death of the dictator Franco, the democratic transition proved to be a time of great political, social and cultural turmoil.

Self-taught, he bears witness to his own life and the world around him: an eager youth yearning for freedom. Over a decade, Madrid becomes the birthplace and home to this upheaval. La Movida triggers an outburst. A youthful convulsion takes shape and paves the way towards modernity that will, in time, affect all layers of Spanish society.

Rejecting the label of spokesman photographer of La Movida, Alberto García-Alix evolves within this community. His work during that time reveals an intimate practice of documentary photography, in line with August Sander, Diane Arbus or Anders Petersen. Here, the moment is not "decisive" as inthe case of HenrI Cartier-Bresson, the images are not taken "on the run". His compositions, with their striking diagonals and contrasts of light, are orchestrated with patience and skill. His gaze is always frontal, direct, confrontational – inhisown words, thatof a fighter: "Aportrait is a confrontation, a challenge. The pressure of the unspeakable that wants to be said. The camera turns me into a cyclops, with one single longing eye".

Biography
As aphotographer, audiovisualcreator, writerandeditor, hisworkwasfirstexhibited, intheearlyeighties, in the Moriarty and Buades galleries (Madrid) and Portafollio Gallery (London). Throughout his career, his photographic and audiovisual work has been shown internationally at Reina Sofía National Art Center Museum in Madrid, Les Rencontres d'Arles, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, the House of Photography Museum in Moscow, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Castilla y León (MUSAC), and El Prado National Museum of Spain in Madrid, among many others. His works are part of important collections around the world such as the German Deutsche Börse or the National Funds for Contemporary Art in France.

He has been awarded many prizes such as the Spanish National Photography Award (1999), the Community of Madrid Photography Award (2004), the PHotoEspaña Festival Award (2012), and the ENAIRE Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award (2022). In addition to being named 'Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters of France' in 2012, the Spanish Ministry of Culture awarded him in 2019 the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts.

As an author, he has published a dozen photography books and various audiovisual works in which narrative and image complement each other. Among them, The Place of No Return, a 40-minute film creation, was acquired by Reina Sofía National Museum.

Director and founder of the cult magazine “El Canto de la Tripulación” (1989), he is currently co- founder of Cabeza de Chorlito, a publishing house under which some of his books have seen the light: Paraíso de los Creyentes, 2011; Diaporamas, 2012; MOTO, 2015; and the Motorcycle Family Circus magazine trilogy (2016-2021).