Alberto García-Alix

ARTIST STATEMENTFROM WHERE THERE IS NO RETURN

Photography chains my memory. It doesn't just
confine it to what has been seen.
The melancholic emotion of the irrecusable
becomes visible.
The soul of photography is the encounter.
The portrait is a confrontation.
A confrontation that I take on with a direct stare. A
pugilistic gaze.
A challenge: The pressure of the unutterable that
wants to be uttered.

I cannot have an innocent gaze. My intentions are
never honest. They are malicious.
I gather living echoes of what my eyes have seen.
Photography is founded on the faith in what is
visible. Therefore the sigh cannot be seen, but
photographing forces me to find it.
To multiply what I see.
To play with the excess of seeing and of seeing
myself...
I delimit the space.
I decide how and where to look.
I look through the camera, protecting myself and
finally locking me up inside myself.
This journey woven over a memory of lights,
flashes, optical illusions, is looking for a revelation.
A bridge. A bridge across the abyss. A constant
rebirth.
Breath.
The visible scenery of a sentiment to the beat of
my emotions.
Today I am aware that a way of seeing is a way of
being.
I am a photographer.
Photography is the space where I can imagine
myself.
In photography, destiny and present dream in the
beat of a fragment of time, a permanent past.
A permanent past...
There is no possible return.
Wi th photogr aphs , a s e a of memor i e s i s
awakened.
It roils. It foams.
Photos and more photos that leave an echo in
their wake. The echo of my footsteps.
Photography is a certificate of presence; but, even
more so, it is a certificate of absence.
In photos we are no longer as we are. We are as
we were...

Photography is a powerful medium.
It takes us to the other side of life.
And there, trapped in its world of light and
shadow, as a mere presence, we also live.
On the other side of life, from where there is no
return.
- Alberto García-Alix