• ANA DEL BARRIO

    Madrid

Updated Sunday,11June2023-00:23

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He shot at seedy rooms with mattresses lying on the floor, at the first syringes that sucked heroin, at the anarchic sessions of Burning or Kaka de Luxe... He shot left and right with his Nikon F2 without knowing that his photographs were going to become iconic images of an entire era.

The unpublished archive of Alberto García-Alix now sees the light in a book -edited by Cabeza de Chorlito- that collects 2,000 photographs from 1975 to 1981.

In them parade the mythical illustrator Ceesepe with his underpants down sitting on a toilet; legendary photographer Ouka Lele lifting her skirts; Toño Martín, the singer of Burning, drunk thrown down the stairs or Alberto García-Alix himself pricking heroin with Teresa, his girlfriend at the time... Myths taken down from their pedestal, captured in those small everyday gestures that strip legends bare.

The photographs start after the death of Franco and collect the convulsive historical moment that was lived after the death of the dictator as the first rally of the CNT after the Civil War or the first demonstrations of gays, lesbians and transsexuals to ask for the repeal of the law of social dangerousness.

With his voice from beyond the grave, García-Alix leafs through 'Archivo Nómada' and tells anecdotes of its protagonists, with a certain nostalgia, because most of them are dead. Pucho, his cat, listens attentively to the conversation and only meows at the end as if asking for the talk to end.

What was it like to work back then? I am surprised by the Madrid so aged. It is the Madrid of the wastelands and people with hats.Do you remember any image that has remained in your retina? It is a book with a great documentation of the time because you could understand it as a personal diary. For example, this day at home. They are my first photos with my first partner in the morning. You can see the house, the record I had in the room, the friends, the first self-portraits... At that time we did not take 800 photos like today. I would make one and settle. You managed to be an exceptional witness of the Transition.At that time I was not aware of the photographic fact. They are images of the underground, long before the MovidaMore than the Movida, you photographed your environment. What we friends experienced. Here is the first drug photo I took. These photos are hard. They are not hard. But you don't like to photograph pain or violence. The pain does not usually appear in the photos. How many cameras do you have? Three laywomen and five Hasselblad. They break and the parts are no longer manufactured. Sometimes I change a broken chassis for another camera.What is your favorite corner of Madrid to photograph? I don't have any favorite sites. It's when something makes you vibrate.And at what point do you shoot? When I have the urge to take pictures. Taking the camera out on the street is heavy because it forces you to look through it. The legendary illustrator Ceesepe in the Metro.A. GARCÍA-ALIXWhat you didn't want to photograph? In that I have a lot of arrogance. I only take pictures of what I want. I don't make portraits of politicians. I'm not a photographer who can advertise. I don't have a team and it's not my thing.And what is the image that has cost you the most to get? It is a constant intellectual work, the mental effort to dialogue with what you see. You look through a camera and the first thing you think about is whether or not you like what you see. That automatically asks for answers. I'm far or near. It has no drive. I repeat myself. He doesn't tell me anything. Then, you begin to answer the questions.Has it ever given you to catch people on the street without asking permission?No. When I do portraiture, I always ask for permission. If I see a person on the street that interests me, sometimes I have had to take courage and I have asked: "Hey, would you allow me to take a picture of you?" It's always a tense moment. People don't like it. Nobody likes it, but we have to try. In general, when I shoot photos on the street they are not portraits. So, theft, but people are like a street set, not a portrait. Not anymore. But in the late 80s, I was sometimes sent to do a portrait work of a person, who didn't understand a man like me. Now these tattoos are worn by everyone, but at that time they did not exist. You are a pioneer of tattoosI set up the first tattoo shop in Spain: Lucifer's hammer. It was the name of a Harley Davidson and we also sold T-shirts and jackets. I am one of those who belongs to a time when tattooing was looking for a meaning. Now there is a lot of decorative tattooing. We were motorcyclists and we showed our belonging to a world. Stravinsky claimed that lesser artists borrow and that great artists steal. Who have you robbed? Myself constantly. That's the best robbery. It is a stimulus. Because also, if you steal it is to improve it. So I've already taken this picture, but I can improve it. A scene in a bar in Madrid.A. GARCÍA-ALIXWhat did they not tell us about the Transition? It was much more violent. We all had episodes with extreme right-wing gangs that roamed and exercised violence in the street with great impunity. Little has been said about that. There were many dead and they never come out. First it began with the five workers shot dead in Vitoria, with Martín Villa, who has never been prosecuted. For example, a person who went with a badge of Che Guevara for Goya and was beaten and, bad luck, killed. There was a lot of violence underground. All that changed when Felipe González arrived. Automatically the jokes with the far-right gangs were over. The guerrillas of Cristo Rey would enter a bar and make everyone sing El cara al sol. And he who did not sing, charged. I was always lucky because I got behind. Here we are trying to tell us an exemplary Transition and, possibly in many things it was, but it was also an injustice. Justice was not done for the victims of the Civil War. Graves continue to be taken. How many years have passed? With the Transition we entered the Movida, which was a youthful hatching, a drive and the liberation of the imposed norms: sex, drugs, magazines ... Keep in mind that with Franco there could not be a magazine of. You couldn't read the book you wanted, nor could you watch the movie you wanted. You also complain that we are now going backwards in rights, yes, terrible. There is a scary involution. And besides, it's always the same. A retrograde right. He has never voted for anything that was progressive. Never. The right voted against divorce and now they are all divorced. Joaquín Sabina says that he is no longer so left-wing because he sees what is happening in Latin America. Here we forget that the Transition came through the Communist Party and that Adolfo Suárez legalized it one Holy Week. Because it was the State Pact for there to be democracy. Of course, the Communist Party assumed the King and the flag. Thanks to that came democracy. The thing is, this country has no memory. And worst of all, it deforms it. Today, we are increasingly polarized. It is always polarized by the same people. Those who have the idea that Spain is their farmhouse. Those who do not allow dissent. But there is no desire for justice or reparation. My family has dead from the right-wing Civil War, logically, and they are in a pantheon, but the poor are in the gutterA picture of Madrid of the time.A. GARCíA-ALIXDo you have been very transgressive? I don't know if that's the word. I had a hard time learning because I didn't know photography. I didn't know anything. Taking pictures of people pricking heroin is transgressive, isn't it? But that was my life. It didn't cost me and I didn't see it as a tragedy, but as pleasure. If I wear it because I like it, nobody forces me. I don't lie. I was very lucky that my father gave me a camera, to run away from home and move into the Rastro. There I met other types of people and started photographing. Even if I didn't make money, I was passionate about photography. Being able to see what I had seen again seemed like magic to me. Especially the chemistry of the laboratory. What hooks me at this time to take pictures is the laboratory, getting there every afternoon. Notice that all that has disappeared. In the pErodic We also had a laboratory and it was very nice to see the photos hanging there. I still have the laboratory and there I learned to see and value the compositions I had made, the grays and blacks of the image. I've always had a star, a good metabolism and a lot of willpower.Is it enough with will to get out of drugs or do you need help? It also helps that the body tells you enough. In general, one does not give up drugs, but drugs leave you. They don't sit well with you anymore. I read that you kept catching heroin once a year. That was a boutade. It may appear once every five years. But I don't take drugs anymore, what are you going to get at 67? They are more peaceful. I'm not getting like a cork. I don't drink anymore and I've drunk a lot. I don't have a liver anymore. So what am I going to have the next day? Headache. Of all drugs, alcohol was the bravest. People don't have the perception of alcohol as a drug. The human being has taken drugs all his life, but you have to know how to control the dose, the moment ... If you buy cocaine and put four grams in, are you dumb? I'm not into garlic anymore. Of course, when I go out at night I see many designer pills: Ketamine, ecstasy, MDA. There is everything. But I no longer have the desire or body for anything. The gang of friends of the photographer.A. GARCÍA-ALIXSostiene Sharleen Spiteri, the singer from Texas, that when you are old you become more punk because you really do not care. Yes, I can understand. You no longer have to answer to anyone. Well, nobody doesn't. I give them to the biggest critic, myself. In the same photograph I am very critical, the wildest thing you've ever done? A few days ago I went from Requena to Denia on the motorcycle, which is two and a half hours, and it was raining. At my age there are few who are on the bike, on the road, raining. I was proud to have endured like this.What would you like the image of your life to be? I do not know. The image of my life, I think I have never done. The image one dreams of. There are photos that I liked a lot. But what I have done, is done. It's not worth it anymore. What counts is when you start the exercise of picking up the camera again. Self-portrait by A. García-Alix.

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