Juan Cristóbal Newberry Retana (known as Christopher Cristóbal Newberry).  I was born in Mexico City on 15.11.51 – a palindrome. Speculatively, this may be one reason I have been fascinated by symmetry, repetitiveness, cycles, change, progression.  

I went to 11 different schools in Mexico and the USA before University where I read Communication Science.

I came to Europe in 1976 on a one-way air ticket. I hitchhiked for several months and did casual  work to survive.  Down to only £5 in my pocket, I hitched a ride from Paris to London and have lived in England ever since.

For several years I directed documentaries and educational television programmes for Mexican and British television. I've been a professional photographer since 1985, usually working for not-for-profit organisations. My pictures have appeared in national and local newspapers. At the time of writing two books on architecture and local history, I realised I could transform the images of buildings to look as they might have in the architects' original plans – flat with no perspective.

Digital photography changed everything for me.  In about 2005 I shifted my artistic interests from the factual to the verisimilar – that is information that may appear to be factual, but isn't. I now see myself, not as a photographer, but as an image creator, transforming factual photos into new, verisimilar images. I passionately feel that it's my mission to expose the ‘post-truth’ world, where so many messages are not meant to inform, but rather to confuse and obfuscate: I'm inviting the viewer to become aware that my images are impossible – however much they might resemble reality.  One of the first of these images is my self-portrait where I appear in 1971 and in 2006.