FONTCUBERTA, Joan - The Photography of Nature & The Nature of Photography

Background information

"Catalan photographer Joan FONTCUBERTA is the 33rd recipient of the prestigious Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography.
His 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, the careful fabrications by Joan FONTCUBERTA 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 Joan FONTCUBERTA is an invitation to think; in other words, it makes the believer sceptical and the incredulous believe’.
To celebrate the award Mack and The Hasselblad Foundation are publishing a collection of six of his most iconic series.

Content

The out-of-print volume 'The Photography of Nature & The Nature of Photography' includes six of the most iconic series by Joan FONTCUBERTA:
'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 Joan FONTCUBERTA explores landscapes using Terragen technologies.
The book is a survey of Joan 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." (© Mack Books, 2013)

About Spanish photographer and writer, Joan FONTCUBERTA (b.1955)

Photo books by and ont he work of Joan FONTCUBERTA