WORK

Don’t follow me, I’m lost

This set of photographs showcases a decade in the life of Alberto García-Alix, from 1976 to 1986. It encapsulates an age of youth lived intensely, portrayed in 35-millimeter. These are images that show his need for a vital adventure in order to create and portray the companions and moments of convulsion and personal agitation, as well as the pursuit of pleasure and fun through opiates.

If anyone can talk about Alberto García-Alix, that’s me. I have witnessed his time and his wanderings. His steps have also been my steps. It is possible that we have exchanged our shadows, because when I leave him and I go to sleep, I fear that the shadow that follows me is his. A thousand times I think our friendship is held in something more powerful than love. In fear. Mine, of course. Something about him, perhaps his nonsense or the madness he pulls me toward, makes me fearful. I have reasons to feel it; his folly or the madness to which he drags me, causes me fear. I have reason to feel it; I have been his tireless, inseparable friend since 1976.

(…)
Now those years are so far away that Alberto might say that I have distorted everything. Out of the friends present in those pages only a handful remain. Very few. Death chose at will the boys who stepped forward with their mysterious desolation. Those who are still alive do not forget them. As for me, I lost my shadow to follow Alberto’s, until today I have been silent. If I have done so, it is not only because I am his coy accomplice, and even less because of the gratitude he feels I owe him. If I have kept silent about what I experienced that decade at his side, it is for his photos. It’s strange. From the beginning I believed in them and I was right only about this. Now I know that his images are the consolation that rewards me for having followed him, and that they are, without words, the ones who speak for me with Alberto.