Joan Fontcuberta's Projects
Joan Fontcuberta Pandora's Camera This book is the first English translation of a renowned collection of essays by Joan Fontcuberta, in which he considers the technological shift that photography has undergone in recent years. The medium finds itself torn between loss and hope, between the disappearance of the silver gelatin photograph and the possibilities of the digital medium. Fontcuberta uses the motif of Pandora’s box to conceptualise the capricious nature of photography, its fickle relationship to truth – employing the Greek myth concerning a large jar containing myriad forms of human unhappiness, or blessings, depending on the version you read. As Pandora’s camera, digital technology spells calamity to some and liberation to others; it is blamed for irretrievably discrediting veracity, but at the same time it introduces a new degree of truth. In his signature ironic style and playful tone, Fontcuberta examines the new principles that have arisen within the digital ecosystem, in jocular essays such as ‘I Knew the Spice Girls’ or 'The Mystery of the Missing Nipple'. His critical reflections and poetic evocations are inspired by the hope that still remains in the notion of a postmodern Pandora’s camera – one that might not only describe our environment, but also bring transparency to it. Joan Fontcuberta is Catalan artist, writer and t
Catalan photographer Joan Fontcuberta is the 33rd recipient of the prestigious Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography. To celebrate the award MACK and The Hasselblad Foundation are publishing a collection of six of Fontcuberta’s most iconic series including: Herbarium (1984) and Fauna (1987), dealing with botanical and biological findings of newly discovered species; Constellations (1993), images of previously undiscovered stars and their stardust; Sputnik (1997), which tells the tale of a Russian cosmonaut still lost in space; also included are Sirens (2000), an investigative project for National Geologic on the finding of the Hydropithecus (mermaid) fossils, and Orogenesis (2002) in which Fontcuberta explores landscapes using Terragen technologies. Fontcuberta’s photography is itself about photography’s own workings, and with each series he challenges the audience’s trust in the veracity of the medium and its function as a system of representation. Confronting our anxieties about that system, Fontcuberta’s careful fabrications are laced with clues and inconsistencies – the photographer himself even appears, disguised as Hans von Kubert or Joan Fontana. In exposing the various artifices of the photographic medium, he asks how and why photography acquires a seductive truthfulness in the eyes of its viewers. As Jorge Wagensberg suggests, ‘The mere possibility that it could be a Fontcuberta is an invitation to think; in other words, it makes the believer sceptical and the incredulous believe’. The book is a survey of Fontcuberta’s oeuvre displaying his genius as photographer, essayist, humorist and fantasist alike. In teasing fashion, the book can be flipped to reveal an essay section, with texts by Geoffrey Batchen and Jorge Wagensberg that examine and unpick the myths that Fontcuberta has so meticulously constructed.
