While producing his well known portraits of the late 1980s, Alberto García-Alix began to focus on the motif of urban landscapes, always filtering his images through his personal and emotional vision. He began to place specific attention on architectural elements in an attempt to appropriate and include them in his visual autobiography. The descriptive and documentary nature of Alix’s earliest photographs gradually gave way to an introspective mood as the artist attempted to find an emotional correspondence with his environment.

This evolution is clearly observed at two points in time, first in 2003, the year he moved to Paris to undergo medical treatment, a cathartic process that forced him to turn to himself. The second point occurred following trips to China in 2007 and 2009, where he witnessed scenes that reminded him of his past. In Alteradas Presencias [Altered Presences], a photograph he made in Beijing, García-Alix utilized the low intensity of twilight to make a composition featuring an unremarkable building foregrounded by blurry tree branches. His framing and play on scale allowed him to transcend the formal limits of photography to capture a reality that is more felt than represented.