Broken mirrors
Photography as pseudodocumentary discourse
Held by Joan Fontcuberta
Photography was born both as a form of document and a form of entertainment. Throughout its history those two categories, which have often been opposed, have led to different social uses: from consumption and science to the domain of the vernacular and the visual arts. The idea here is an ontology of photography which understands the uncertainty of its present identity from a criticism of its hegemonic documentary models.
Joan Fontcuberta is a photographer and lecturer at Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona
Programme
Photography and the invention of archetypes
Statistics and the photographic record as tools for establishing social typologies. Eugenics and its visual legacy.
Photography and historical glorification
Fantasies of reconstruction. Aestheticisation of the past. The archive as monument.
The photography of ghosts as a precursor of the avantgarde
Evidence versus experiment in the photographic hunt for fairies and spirits in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The fake documentary as artistic strategy
The deliberate confusion of genres. The institutionalisation of doubt in digital culture.