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El proyecto fotográfico The concept of a work with such level of inmersion, as that you developed, begins by the photographer. Tell me about when you mean "to play the shooting in just a single card" My way to do is classical, as that practice the great masters of the 20th century. My work always is a mixing with the obsession of Arbus and the mechanics of Avedon, Iriving Penn´s lyric with the aggressiveness of Klein, or the boxer´s look of Garcia-Alix with the expressionism of Lynch. In this trip to the heart of rock 'n' roll have been on many occasions with dozens of rockers queueing to be photographed and almost all of the portraits are the result of a single shot, a single playing card, as well as snapshots. Frame, motivate and trigger the shutter. Fifteen seconds. Only a picture and an ace of hearts as a result. It´s true. None of repetitions, without place to doubt, nothing of hesitation... The first surprised always I am. "El proyecto fotográfico" 12/10/2011 Photografica, bienal española de fotografía Jorge Ontalba conversa con Thomas Canet, Antonio Alay, Axelle Fossier, Luis Baylón, Christine Spengler y Javier Esteban.  Photografica Descarga PDF  Revista Quo Once, when you made other kinds of pictures, afirmabas you liked much the faces and expressions of the human being... What are you looking for in rockabilly scene? Not seeking anything today to not seek years ago. The intensity of the gaze, the exciting faces, complex brains, aged and primitive, essential... Although the music really is the key in this project. More than the physical dimension is the spirit of rock 'n' roll that moves everything, what gives meaning to my work.. Photography, as you know, can be a perfect excuse to live something intensely... "Escena y estética rocker" 26/07/2011 Aurora Ferrer entrevista a Antonio Alay en Revista Quo  Descarga PDF  Rock and Blog [ ... ]  Among the remains of what was the informal presentation of the project in Madrid, or what is the same, a soiree in the studio of Antonio Alay with some of those involved as guests with the excuse to know how that was growing in magnitude and quality of the project Rockin´ Spain.   I was stunned by what I saw.    The beauty of the pictures, the presentation of luxury, the texts… had the opportunity to read those of Miguel Ríos, Ely Agramunt, Victor Coyote, Anabel Moreno, García-Alix… and I suddenly felt shrink to be aware of with who had touched me hobnob me on this trip. The vibrations began to move from good to excellent, and kicked the skepticism that could stay in my mind came out fired through the window.   There was still no publisher committed at that time, but what I saw that afternoon left me no doubts of that time spent was worth the penalty, and I knew that, even in the worst case, what would be made public in a way or another.   It was necessary, and mainly for a reason; After years of being treated as fair monkeys by major media in a country which still scorn to the different that not agreed with the doctrines of bread and circuses, for the first time the Spanish rocker scene had the opportunity to come to the fore speaking in first person by the front door and all fanfare. [ ... ] "Rockers en primera persona y por la puerta grande" 07/06/2011 Un artículo de Francho Angás en Rockandblog.es Descarga PDF www.rockers.es How did you start in the world of photography? Through my father and my old friend Angel Moliní, rest in peace. Transmitted me them skills and knowledge. We had a laboratory of two square meters at home and my father described me the process of developing and sailed the entire afternoons at red safelights, breath the aromas of hydroquinone and acetic acid seeing images appear in black&white. It was a total discovery.  Carlos Villasante induced me to the introspection and Alberto Garcia-Alix to creative obsession. I've learned from them and the classical masters such as Irving Penn and Diane Arbus, David Lynch, William Klein and others. The technique worried me for a couple of years; what always interested me, and I will be interested, it is the condition of life, the dimension of the feelings... You can found in Photography  the perfect vehicle to grow up as human being... "Un viaje al corazón del Rock´n´Roll " 16/07/2009 Alfonso Hervás, The Profe, entrevista a Antonio Alay en www.rockers.es  Descarga PDF www.calidoscopio.net [ ... ] He works to make each shot the final shot, which provides tension and importance at every moment, thereby producing an atmosphere intimate and special, essential to make a vibrant portrait. Calls the attention of his work when you discover the animal of their moments, his talent for capturing the essence without moving away from the delicacy of his characters, because it's real people: these are their clothes and their hairstyles, their gestures and postures, there is no pose or forced situations. Characters that are then portrayed are real, are friends, are people crossing on his way; were not built up.[ ... ] "La mirada certera de Antonio Alay" 09/01/2008 Un artículo de Sara Bernuy en Calidoscopio Descarga PDF Alrededor de la fotografía [ ... ] Time stops when we were bewitched by certain images. The situation created or captured by the photographer sensitized allows getting into disturbing environments by beautiful, mysterious and magical. Certain portraits, a determined faces, moments in concrete. The situation created by some photographers allows find ourselves, with our senses less explored, and discovering passions & feelings. These are the magical portraits; the recognized, the desired portraits. Those which convey us the emotions more delightful. Those based on the most conclusive simplicity.  [ ... ] "Algunos retratos mágicos" 30/01/2006 A. Alay comments in his blog ( in spanish ) Alrededor de la Fotografía Acerca de "Las miradas perdidas" [ ... ] Antonio Alay dictionary does not contain the word temperance. His work ranges from cold to heat without going through an intermediate state. His lens is focused by an Angel or a devil. Find your truth and chases it in the eyes of their models. Antonio Alay, teacher of History of Photography in the TAI school in Madrid for two years, has just completed his photographic exhibition The Lost Sights in Artymagen Gallery of Zaragoza. For the portraits that are grouped in this sample, Antonio Alay has kidnapped your camera the restive glances of the faces with which found face to face. The result is that both the photographer and the viewer, are facing himself watching lost eyes that cause a certain suspicion inexplicable, a fear of enigmatic, as if it had captured feelings in its purest form.  [ ... ] Olvido Andujar comments about Alay´s work. 13/04/2004

Antonia Magazine What have your photographs in special to make your work "Rockers" finalist in the prestigious Hasselblad Masters Awards? What does the gaze of Antonio Alay in rocker worldwide scene to make it so special? Well, guess because they are true. I say that my pictures are not a fantasy or a result of hipersubjetiva and expressionist insight about a daily face aesthetic exercise, as it could have been my previous series The Lost Sights. For me was a surprise and I especially appreciate that authors like Steve McCurry and Anton Corbijn, first members of the jury in this 2012 edition, qualify my work as one of the best among thousands of worldwide photographers. Mary Ellen Mark won this award years ago and was also a stimulus to submit my work. My key is simplicity; There is no place to interpretations of any kind, there is no "second reading", you do not need a special sensitivity to see my pictures. I don't do art, do direct pictures without artifice, not recreation in props or hairpieces, or in impossible scenarios; my interest focuses on the person, in faces which stuck the gaze in the viewer. Maybe this is another key  in these portraits: the face to face that occurs in the act to see,  through photography, with the protagonists of the rocker culture in Spain. No trap or cardboard. Pure photography. Direct to the heart. "Disparos a ritmo de Rockabilly" 01/09/2011 MJ Garrido entrevista a Antonio Alay en Antonia Magazine  Descarga PDF Heraldo de Aragón [...] The outbreak of the rock'n ' roll in the USA, the silence after explosion, however in Spain until the recording of the album's style, made by Los Estudiantes in 1960, and then the outbreak of the first soloists: Mike Rios and Bruno Lomas ( the first even makes a delightful evocation of the historic morning of Circo Price). The renaissance in England in the 1970s and the renewed outbreak of the 1980s, with the emergence of Stray Cats, the return to the catacombs in 1990s, festivals, motorbikes, cars, movies, the pin-ups, tattoos, the ducktails the posters… There is practically out loose in this fascinating book documented with profuse photographs by Antonio Alay, "alma mater" of the masterpiece… Well, one is in the air or at least under the magnifying glass of the disagreement or criticism.[...] "El libro gordo del rockabilly" 22/06/2011 Un artículo de Matías Uribe en La voz de mi amo  Descarga PDF El Mundo [ ... ] Lovers of the essence, as genuine, retro...; the iconography of the forties and fifties, the drive-in, vintage cars with flares painted body, tattoos and seedy bars, but also the sun, the beach and the aesthetic surf, there are for everyone. And, of course, the music that was born during this time and dominated the world. The rocker movement is a large family which today is in good health at Spain. The photographer Antonio Alay began a project to translate all of that and has finished directing something much larger. The result is Rockin' Spain, a complete visual document accompanied by a collection of texts writed by 30 experts - journalist, musicians, DJs, photographers...- on the different subjects. The work ends with an album produced by Marcos Sendarrubias involving ten spanish bands of the current rockabilly scene, as Charlie Hightone & The Rock-It's, Los Vólidos or The Sun Rockets. All this with the blessing, in the form of a foreword, by Diego Manrique, living legend of music journalism. [ ... ] "Rockin' Spain, la llama de los cincuenta sigue viva" 25/05/2011 Un artículo de Fernando Díaz de Quijano en El Cultural Decarga PDF 200 dias en Sing-Sing  [ ... ] Antonio Alay has devoted part of his photographic activity to portray the nooks of rock'n'roll in Spain, their aesthetics and attitudes. His sight, close to ethnographic detail prevails precisely in the lighting ( color and expressive forms ) to show the subject in action or in the portable studio portrait or location. Youth subcultures which resembled with rock &roll and contemporary revival available offer a variant of the social vitality exposed from a stylistic hybrid trying to perpetuate a pattern of behaviour that, from the non-conformism and rebelliousness of the fashionable that contradict any explanatory rule, explains the environmental group in a minority situation. Alay has come with his camera, the length and breadth of the spanish geography, all kinds of events and festivals in which the rocker movement makes an appearance. The starting point for the photographer seems to calibrate a typology which has apparently stopped in time, and in turn, adds contemporary caprices, a modernity in tow of the vestimentaria tradition. [ ... ] "Cultura rocker, imagen y otras historias de revival" 07/06/2009 Un artículo de Javier Reguera en Así se fundó Carnaby Street  Descarga PDF Katarsis Blogzine [ ... ]  I think that since the appearance of the popular digital camera, as it happened when erupts Kodak Brownie camera in 1888, the democratization in the realization of images is compulsive and in many cases therapeutic and argued, as always, by the need for the visual testimony before the clumsy or incomplete description through the word - spoken language. Not all we are "narrators", however we all know how to push the button, like the first Brownie's amateurs [ ... ] "La misma visión, ¿ distintos lenguajes ?" 21/03/2006 Chinaski conversa con Alay en Katarsis Descarga PDF www.elangelcaido.org You always try a high quality of the final copy, why ? isn't it enough with the portrayed character? I always try to keep some style to develop my work. The subject is essential, but must frame, select, must be assessed: This abstraction involves your photographic vision, your way of looking at: it's share, the subject offers and the photographer interprets. Both do the picture, but the photographer is who decides the image, the spirit of portrait. All the nuances make sense. M. Rodriguez entrevista a Antonio Alay en El ángel caido. 15/01/2004 Revista Foto "I could choose between a hammer and a chisel or a camera", commented in with regard to the portfolio - cover photo included - that publish you in April 1995, "but I fell in love with an old twin lens reflex" [a Mamiya C330 which gave him his father]. If the portfolio was memorable for the prodigious domain Antonio Alay showed exercise in the "manufacture" of black and white portraits, present won't you lag behind. In these five years, Alay has polished up limits certainly unusual, masterful pure, his personal style as a photographer portrait of exception. His portraits set, and with largesse, the difference. Go and see. And read, because Alay, in addition to portraits, tells their stories. A figure... "Retratos que marcan la diferencia" 01/10/2000 Texto de Manuel López