Helena Almeida: 'Seduzir' [To Seduce, 2002] (detail)

Collection

Semiòpolis: Profecías (Nausée - Sartre) [Semiopolis: Prophecies (Nausée - Sartre)]

Image caption
JOAN FONTCUBERTA

Semiòpolis: Profecías (Nausée - Sartre) [Semiopolis: Prophecies (Nausée - Sartre)]

  • 1999
  • Cibachrome on paper
  • 180 x 120 cm
  • Edition 1/2
  • Cat. F_53
  • Acquired in 2001
By:
Isabel Tejeda

This photo by Joan Fontcuberta illustrates the conceptual consistency of his work. He has spent decades questioning the concepts of truth and representation through the medium of photography, which has, since its discovery at the turn of the 19th century, been deemed to provide a true reflection of what is real. Semiopolis (1999) brings together photos of Braille versions of writings fundamental to literature, philosophy and religion: The Aleph, the Bible, the Odyssey, Don Quijote, the Metamorphoses by Ovid, On the Origin of Species by Darwin and, here, the Prophecies by Nostradamus. The pages are photographed simply: a very close close-up of a fragment, back-lit and in perspective, makes the page look like the line of the horizon, the finis terrae of an unknown world; like a cosmic landscape that recalls the iconic initial title sequences of the Star Wars films. The essence of the landscape, its orography, is photographed but its three dimensions are turned into the two of emulsion paper.

They are planets of signs that no-one can read. For the sighted, text in Braille has only visual value. It becomes a picture, but paradoxically the sightless who have learned to read Braille cannot read it with their fingers either, because there is no relief in the photograph: the text has become a smooth surface. In the words of the artist himself, 'only partnership can resolve this blindness'.

This series is linked to to others: Constellations, in which Fontcuberta photographed mosquitos squashed against the windscreen of his car, blown up hugely until they seemed like firmaments; and Haemograms, in which he did the same with drops of blood from some of his friends, made to look like abstract paintings. He does not alter the objects photographed in any of the three series. He simply uses the typical tools of photography such as framing and lighting.

Isabel Tejeda

 
By:
Álvaro de los Ángeles
Joan Fontcuberta
Barcelona 1955

Joan Fontcuberta is a major reference point for contemporary photography, an essayist, a teacher and an exhibition curator. He graduated in Information Science from the Autonomous University of Barcelona in 1977. From that time on he took an interest in photography, mainly as a means of conveying information, influenced by the photographic school of Kassel and in particular by the works of Floris Michael Neusüss and his use of photograms. Since the late 1970s Fontcuberta has been continually calling into question the intrinsic qualities of the medium through his works, based on conceptual presumptions. He argues against modernist parameters from an indicial concept of photography, its documentary and illusionary nature, and even against post-modernist use of images via digital alteration and the contextual conditions for their reading and interpretation. Stand-out works include the series Herbarium (1982), in which he looks at the parameters of the photography of the German New Objectivity movement through deceit and documentary fiction. These ideas are further developed in Fauna (1987). In Frottogrames (1987-1990) and Palimpsests (1989-1993) he again questions the epistemological certainties of photography. His series from the end of the 20th century and the turn of the 21st such as Sputnik (1997) and Googlegrams (2005) deal with the importance of context in interpreting images in the mass media.

In the course of his long career he has staged stand-out solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art (New York, 1988), the Santa Mònica Art Centre (Barcelona, 1990 & 2001), the Art Institute of Chicago (USA, 1990), the Institute of Modern Art of Valencia (1992), the National Art Museum of Catalonia (Barcelona, 1999), the Élysée Museum (Lausanne, France, 1999), the Telefónica Foundation (Madrid, 2001), the Australian Center of Photography (Sidney, 2007), the Pilar i Joan Miró Foundation (Palma, 2007), the Palais des Beaux- Arts (Lille, France, 2010), the Hasselblad Center (Gothenburg, Sweden, 2013), the Maison Européenne de la Photographie (Paris, 2014), the Science Museum (London, 2014), Cosmocaixa (Barcelona, 2015), the Banco de la República Art Museum (Bogotá, 2016) and the Domus Artium (Salamanca, 2017). He has received numerous distinctions, including the David Octavius Hill Medal, the Fotografisches Akademie GDL from Germany (1988), the Spanish National Photography Award (1998), the Plastic Arts Award of the Regional Government of Catalonia (2012), the Hasselblad international photography award (2013) and the Award for Culture (Photography Subsection) of the Regional Community of Madrid (2015).

Álvaro de los Ángeles

 
 
Vv.Aa. Colección Banco de España. Catálogo razonado, Madrid, Banco de España, 2019, vol. 2.