The Nature of Photography & The Photography of Nature

Catalan photographer Joan Fontcuberta’s work explores the artifice at the heart of photography – testing the limits of our faith in photographs as he creatively mixes fact with fiction, and science with art. Fontcuberta is the 33rd recipient of the prestigious Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography, and this digital edition celebrating the award is a survey of Fontcuberta’s oeuvre, including six of his most iconic photographic series: 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; 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 as a system of representation, as he exploits our desire to believe what we see in a photograph. The ebook includes essays by Geoffrey Batchen and Jorge Wagensberg that unpick the myths Fontcuberta has so meticulously constructed, exploring his genius as photographer, essayist, humorist and fantasist alike.