) is a conceptual art

Conceptual art

Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...

ist whose best-known works, such as Fauna and Sputnik, examine the truthfulness of photography. In addition, he is a writer, editor, teacher, and curator.

Biography

Fontcuberta received a degree in communications from the Autonomous University of Barcelona

Autonomous University of Barcelona

The Autonomous University of Barcelona is a public university mostly located in Cerdanyola, near the city of Barcelona in Catalonia, Spain....

 in 1977. He worked in advertising in his early career, and his family had also worked in advertising. From 1979 to 1986 he was a professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Barcelona

University of Barcelona

The University of Barcelona is a public university located in the city of Barcelona, Catalonia in Spain. It is a member of the Coimbra Group, LERU, European University Association, Mediterranean Universities Union, International Research Universities Network and Vives Network...

, after which he earned a living through his art.

In 1980 he co-founded the Spanish/English visual arts journal PhotoVision, and he is still Editor in Chief. Since 1993 Fontcuberta has been a professor of audiovisual communication at Pompeu Fabra University

Pompeu Fabra University

Pompeu Fabra University is a university in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. It is widely considered to be one of the best universities in Spain and in Europe, and was ranked 1st in scientific productivity in Spain in 2009. Founded in 1990, it is named after the Catalan philologist Pompeu Fabra...

 in Barcelona. Among other teaching appointments, he was visiting lecturer in Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 in 2003. Among other awards, he was named an Officer in the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture in 1994. His curatorial experience includes serving as the Artistic Director of the 1996 Rencontres d'Arles

Arles

Arles is a city and commune in the south of France, in the Bouches-du-Rhône department, of which it is a subprefecture, in the former province of Provence....

, an international photography festival.. Exposed at Les Rencontres d'Arles, France, in 2005 and 2009.

Approach to art

Fontcuberta describes himself as "self-taught in photography" and considers himself "a conceptual art

Conceptual art

Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...

ist using photography." He states that the propaganda and dictatorship of Spain under Franco in his first 20 years led him to be skeptical about authority, which is reflected in his art. His background in communications and advertising led him to contemplate the relationship between photography and truth, and Fontcuberta believes that humor is an important component of his work. His art has been described as "postmodern

Postmodernism

Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...

."

Works in museums

Fontcuberta's works are held in the permanent collections of many museums, such as Art Institute of Chicago

Art Institute of Chicago

The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is one of America's largest accredited independent schools of art and design, located in the Loop in Chicago, Illinois. It is associated with the museum of the same name, and "The Art Institute of Chicago" or "Chicago Art Institute" often refers to either...

; Center for Creative Photography

Center for Creative Photography

The Center for Creative Photography , established in 1975 and located on the University of Arizona campus, is a research facility and archival repository containing the full archives of over sixty of the most famous American photographers including those of Edward Weston, Harry Callahan and Garry...

, Tucson; George Eastman House

George Eastman House

The George Eastman House is the world's oldest museum dedicated to photography and one of the world's oldest film archives, opened to the public in 1949 in Rochester, New York, USA. World-renowned for its photograph and motion picture archives, the museum is also a leader in film preservation and...

, Rochester; Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Los Angeles County Museum of Art

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is an art museum in Los Angeles, California. It is located on Wilshire Boulevard along Museum Row in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles, adjacent to the George C. Page Museum and La Brea Tar Pits....

; Metropolitan Museum of Art

Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...

, New York; Musée National d’Art Moderne / Centre Georges Pompidou

Centre Georges Pompidou

Centre Georges Pompidou is a complex in the Beaubourg area of the 4th arrondissement of Paris, near Les Halles, rue Montorgueil and the Marais...

, Paris; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes

Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Buenos Aires)

The National Museum of Fine Arts is an Argentine art museum in Buenos Aires, located in the Recoleta section of the city. The MNBA inaugurated a branch in Neuquén in 2004.-History:...

, Buenos Aires; Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona

Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art

The Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art is situated in the Plaça dels Àngels, in El Raval, Ciutat Vella, Barcelona, Spain. The museum opened to the public on November 28, 1995. Its current director is Bartomeu Marí . Previous directors were Daniel Giralt-Miracle , Miguel Molins , Manuel J...

; Museum Folkwang

Museum Folkwang

Museum Folkwang is a major collection of 19th and 20th century art in Essen, Germany. The museum was established in 1922 by merging the Essener Kunstmuseum, which was founded in 1906, and the private Folkwang Museum of the collector and patron Karl Ernst Osthaus in Hagen, founded in 1901.The term...

, Essen; Museum Ludwig

Museum Ludwig

Museum Ludwig, located in Cologne, Germany, houses a collection of modern art. It includes works from PopArt, Abstract and Surrealism, and has one of the largest Picasso collections in Europe. It also features many works by Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein....

, Cologne; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum of Modern Art

Museum of Modern Art

The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...

, New York; National Gallery of Canada

National Gallery of Canada

The National Gallery of Canada , located in the capital city Ottawa, Ontario, is one of Canada's premier art galleries.The Gallery is now housed in a glass and granite building on Sussex Drive with a notable view of the Canadian Parliament buildings on Parliament Hill. The acclaimed structure was...

, Ottawa; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a modern art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art and was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th century art...

.

Selected exhibitions

Solo exhibitions of single series of Fontcuberta's works include the following (with earliest known year of exhibition in parentheses):

Herbarium (1984)

In this series, Fontcuberta "arranged inanimate objects such as electrical cord, plastic, a shaving brush or a rubber hose into what appear to be exotic plants", thereby creating "pseudoplants". The black and white still-life photographs of these constructions were "drily classified in Latin" and thereby resembled the photographs of Karl Blossfeldt

Karl Blossfeldt

Karl Blossfeldt was a German photographer, sculptor, teacher and artist who worked in Berlin, Germany. He is best known for his close-up photographs of plants and living things. He was inspired, as was his father, by nature and the way in which plants grow...

. The photographs were exhibited in Belgium, the United States, Germany, Japan, Italy, Spain, Canada, and France.

Fauna (1987)

Also known as "Dr. Ameisenhaufen's Fauna" or "Secret Fauna", Fontcuberta created this series in collaboration with the writer and photographer Pere Formiguera. The premise was that Fontcuberta and Formiguera discovered the long-lost archives of German zoologist Dr. Peter Ameisenhaufen, who was born in 1895 and who disappeared mysteriously in 1955. Ameisenhaufen had catalogued a number of unusual animals; for example, Ceropithecus icarocornu resembles a monkey with a unicorn-like horn on its head and wings; and Solenoglypha polipodida resembles a snake with 12 feet.

A review of the exhibition as presented in 1988 at the Museum of Modern Art

Museum of Modern Art

The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...

 noted that the evidence presented for the existence of the animals included "photographs... both in their natural habitats and in laboratory situations; detailed field notes, both in the original German and English translations; an occasional skeletal X-ray or dissection drawing; two or three tapes of the animals' cries, and in one case, an actual stuffed specimen.” Furthermore, a video displayed interviews in which various people discussed Ameisenhaufen's life.

The exhibition was shown in England, Spain, Denmark, Germany, Japan, Canada and the United States. The fake animals displayed at the exhibitions varied according to the "legends, traditions, and superstitions" of the place hosting the exhibition. Among other clues suggesting that the exhibition was a hoax, "Formiguera" and "Ameisenhaufen" both mean "anthill," and the name of "Hans von Kubert" (Ameisenhaufen's research assistant) sounds like "Joan Fontcuberta."

Fontcuberta reported that responses to the exhibition ranged "from people who understand that it is a farce and appreciate the satire and the humor of it, to people who understand it's a farce and are angry at you for trying to fool them, to people who believe it and are angry, to people who believe it and are delighted." He said in another interview that during the 1989 exhibition in the Barcelona Museum of Natural Science, "30% of the visitors aged 20 to 30, with university training, believed that some of our animals could have existed."

Constellations (1993)

In this series, "the images of the cosmos are strewn with a fine stardust", but "what they actually record is dust, crushed insects and other debris that accumulated on the windshield of Mr. Fontcuberta's car." The photographs were created "by applying sheets of 8-by-10-inch film directly to the glass and shining a light through, creating photograms, which were then made into Cibachrome prints."

Artist and the Photograph (1995)

In this series, Fontcuberta "imagine[d] and realize[d] photographic works by the four greatest Spanish artists of the twentieth century, namely Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

, Joan Miró

Joan Miró

Joan Miró i Ferrà was a Spanish Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist born in Barcelona.Earning international acclaim, his work has been interpreted as Surrealism, a sandbox for the subconscious mind, a re-creation of the childlike, and a manifestation of Catalan pride...

, Salvador Dalí

Salvador Dalí

Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....

 and Antoni Tàpies

Antoni Tàpies

Antoni Tàpies i Puig, 1st Marquess of Tàpies is a Catalan painter. He is one of the most famous European artists of his generation. After studying law for 3 years, he devoted himself from 1943 onwards only to his painting...

." He mixed fact (e.g., that Picasso and André Villers collaborated on a series of lithographs called "Diurnes") with fiction (e.g., that a researcher recently found discarded images from the series). The purpose of this series was to explore how curators and museums influence the public's perception of art.

Sputnik (1997)

For this project, Fontcuberta fabricated evidence that the Soyuz 2

Soyuz 2

Soyuz 2 was an unpiloted spacecraft in the Soyuz family intended to perform a docking maneuver with Soyuz 3. Although the two craft approached closely, the docking did not take place.-Other uses of name:...

 spacecraft was crewed by cosmonaut Ivan Istochnikov. Soyuz 1

Soyuz 1

Soyuz 1 was a manned spaceflight of the Soviet space program. Launched into orbit on April 23, 1967 carrying cosmonaut Colonel Vladimir Komarov, Soyuz 1 was the first flight of the Soyuz spacecraft...

, an actual Soviet space mission in 1967, had ended with the death of cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov when the spacecraft crashed on landing. In 1968, according to the fabricated story, "Istochnikov and his canine companion Kloka mysteriously vanished after leaving the Soyuz 2 capsule for a routine space walk. When the Soyuz 3

Soyuz 3

Soyuz 3 was a spaceflight mission launched by the Soviet Union on October 26, 1968. For four consecutive days, Commander Georgy Beregovoy piloted the Soyuz 7K-OK spacecraft through eighty-one orbits of Earth.-Crew:-Backup crew:...

 arrived for a docking maneuver, it found only a vodka bottle containing a note, floating in orbit outside the empty, meteorite-damaged ship." The real Soyuz 3 spacecraft did rendezvous

Space rendezvous

A space rendezvous is an orbital maneuver during which two spacecraft, one of which is often a space station, arrive at the same orbit and approach to a very close distance . Rendezvous requires a precise match of the orbital velocities of the two spacecraft, allowing them to remain at a constant...

 with Soyuz 2, but Soyuz 2 was an uncrewed mission launched as a rendezvous target for Soyuz 3. According to Fontcuberta, Soviet officials deleted Istochnikov from official Soviet history to avoid embarrassment; however, the "Sputnik Foundation" discovered Istochnikov's "voice transcriptions, videos, original annotations, some of his personal effects, and photographs taken throughout his lifetime." The exhibition of artifacts (e.g., photographs) related to "Soyuz 2" was shown in many countries, including Spain, France, Portugal, Italy, Mexico, Japan, and the United States. Among other reactions to the exhibition, a Russian ambassador "got extremely angry because [Fontcuberta] was insulting the glorious Russian past and threatened to present a diplomatic complaint."

Several lines of evidence available since the first exhibition of "Sputnik" in 1997 in Madrid suggested that the story and artifacts form an elaborate hoax:

• The name "Ivan Istochnikov" is a Russian translation of Joan Fontcuberta's name; in specific, "Joan" and "Ivan" both translate to "John" and "Fontcuberta and Istochnikov both mean 'hidden fountain'".
• The photographs of Istochnikov show Fontcuberta's face.
• Pages of the official Web site of the Madrid exhibition contain the words "PURE FICTION" toward the top of each page in light red text on a dark red background or light pink text on a white background.
• The front and rear endpapers of the catalog accompanying the Madrid exhibition have the words "it's all fiction" in Russian and Spanish printed on them using glow-in-the-dark
  Phosphorescence
  Phosphorescence is a specific type of photoluminescence related to fluorescence. Unlike fluorescence, a phosphorescent material does not immediately re-emit the radiation it absorbs. The slower time scales of the re-emission are associated with "forbidden" energy state transitions in quantum...
  
   ink.
• At the Web site of Spanish newspaper El Mundo, the third of three pages concerning the Madrid exhibition states that "the report which we published on the previous pages is a product of his [Fontcuberta's] imagination."

Nevertheless, "many unsuspecting folks have been taken in by the story", including the Spanish journalist Iker Jiménez

Íker Jiménez

Iker Jiménez Elizari is a Spanish journalist.He was born in Vitoria, and has a bachelor's degree in journalism from both the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and the European University....

. On the 11 June 2006 television show Cuarto Milenio (Fourth Millennium), Jiménez said (in Spanish) about Istochnikov "the question is why [he was deleted from history], what he had done, why he annoyed [the Soviet government]." In response, "one of Jiménez's collaborators, Gerardo Pelaez, said the Soviet authorities made Istochnikov disappear because he was the personification of 'a noisy failure'." Fontcuberta was quoted as saying about Jiménez's mistake "It's all very funny!" The next week, Jiménez issued a correction, saying that the story was a "cosmic urban legend."

At least one Web page states "The Mexican magazine Luna Cornea, Number 14, January/April 1998, p. 58, already displayed the photos and tragic story of the [Soyuz 2] mission as the unalloyed truth." However:

• The director of the magazine was Pablo Ortiz Monasterio, who edited a 1985 book for which Fontcuberta wrote the introduction.
• Under Ortiz Monasterio's direction, the magazine had earlier published an article about Fontcuberta's Fauna project that stated that the animals were "imaginary."
• The excerpt from Sputnik in question is accompanied by a paragraph that begins "The Catalan photographer and researcher Joan Fontcuberta, in whose work the truths -- or lies -- of images have been placed at the service of natural history, has sent Luna Córnea his most recent finding, 'Sputnik.'"

Japanese singer Akino Arai

Akino Arai

is a Japanese singer, song-writer, and lyricist, best known for her works in anime such as Outlaw Star, Noir, Macross Plus, and many others....

 wrote a song Sputnik (published in the Album Furu Platinum

Furu Platinum

Furu Purachina is Akino Arai's fourth official album release.-Track listing:#"スプートニク"#:#"願い事"#:#"ガレキの楽園"#:#"Flower"...

) about Istochnikov and his dog Kloka. The song begins with the fragment from the Russian poem written by Evtushenko, which was also used in the Sputnik exhibition Catalogue. The poem in this song is a back translation and doesn't fit to the Russian original in the book. Also, the upcoming sci-fi feature film The Cosmonaut

The Cosmonaut

The Cosmonaut is an upcoming Spanish science-fiction feature film directed by Nicolas Alcala and produced by Carola Rodriguez and Bruno Teixidor. The first feature-length project of Riot Cinema Collective, it is notable for its use of crowdfunding techniques and Creative Commons license in its...

 is heavily inspired by Fontcuberta's hoax.

Hemograms (1998)

Fontcuberta wrote about this series: "The idea was to invite friends and people close to me to provide a sample of their blood... [on] a piece of transparent film.... Immediately afterward, I make an enlargement on photographic paper using the blood as a negative...." The photographs have been described as "exploring identity through blood and its self-expression as abstract art." A review of some photographs from the series stated that they caused the writer to "imagine anonymous blood donors, laboratory procedures, and the possibility of AIDS, or cancer."

Sirens (2000)

This series consisted of the installation of fake fossils of mermaid

Mermaid

A mermaid is a mythological aquatic creature with a female human head, arms, and torso and the tail of a fish. A male version of a mermaid is known as a "merman" and in general both males and females are known as "merfolk"...

s in the Réserve Géologique de Haute-Provence in Digne-les-Bains

Digne-les-Bains

Digne-les-Bains or simply and historically Digne is a commune of France, capital of the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence department.-History:...

 in southern France, which were then photographed. Fontcuberta created a story about how the "Hydropithecus" (water-monkey) fossils were discovered by a "Father Jean Fontana" whose face resembles Fontcuberta's. Subsequently the fossils have "become a permanent feature of the park."

Pin Zhuang (2001)

The name of this work "is Chinese for 'dismantled', 'dismounted' or 'puzzle." It was inspired by the 2001 Hainan Island incident

Hainan Island incident

On April 1, 2001, a mid-air collision between a United States Navy EP-3E ARIES II signals intelligence aircraft and a People's Liberation Army Navy J-8II interceptor fighter jet resulted in an international dispute between the United States and the People's Republic of China called the Hainan...

 "in which an American spy plane that crashed in China was thoroughly picked over and returned to the United States in pieces." The exhibition, which "depict[ed] model planes carefully mis-constructed by the artist and photographed on 'flights' through outer space, was described as "haunting, poetic and thought-provoking."

Karelia: Miracles & Co. (2002)

The intent of this series was to "de-dramatize the irrational force behind religious feelings, while exposing the accompanying economic commercialization and political manipulation." The premise was that Fontcuberta visited a monastery in the Karelia

Karelia

Karelia , the land of the Karelian peoples, is an area in Northern Europe of historical significance for Finland, Russia, and Sweden...

 region between Finland and Russia "to unveil the hoax" that it trains students to perform miracles. For example, in the photograph "The Miracle of the Flesh," Fontcuberta is shown holding a slice of ham with an image of Che Guevara

Che Guevara

Ernesto "Che" Guevara , commonly known as el Che or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, intellectual, guerrilla leader, diplomat and military theorist...

 on it, and the caption states that Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...

 or Osama Bin Laden

Osama bin Laden

Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was the founder of the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda, the jihadist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets...

 can be seen on other ham slices depending on the food eaten by the pig. A 2003 exhibition in New York was called "an uncommonly clever tour de force."

Orogenesis (2002)

In this project, also known as "Landscapes without Memory," Fontcuberta "create[d] plausible, even spectacular landscapes using Terragen

Terragen

Terragen is a scenery generator program for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X developed and published by Planetside Software. It can be used to create renderings and animations of landscapes.-History:...

, a computer program originally created for military and scientific uses that turns maps into images of three-dimensional terrain." However, instead of starting with scans of maps, Fontcuberta used "scans of historical artworks such as a Henri Rousseau

Henri Rousseau

Henri Julien Félix Rousseau was a French Post-Impressionist painter in the Naïve or Primitive manner. He was also known as Le Douanier , a humorous description of his occupation as a toll collector...

 painting or Gustave Le Gray

Gustave Le Gray

Jean-Baptiste Gustave Le Gray has been called "the most important French photographer of the nineteenth century" because of his technical innovations in the still new medium of photography, his role as the teacher of other noted photographers, and the extraordinary imagination he brought to picture...

 photograph, as well as parts of the human body" to produce "splendid and astonishing landscapes... (lakes, mountains, rocky deserts)". One review noted that the series suggests a "crisis in contemporary landscape art... [for example] man's emotional and psychological relationship with a rapidly vanishing natural environment." The works suggest that even "scientific" images are influenced by human culture. Along with Googlegrams, the Orogenesis series was said to "call into question the boundaries of representation in the information age."

Googlegrams (2005)

Fontcuberta wrote about this series "The basic idea consists in selecting images that have become icons of our time. ... [The images are] refashioned using a freeware

Freeware

Freeware is computer software that is available for use at no cost or for an optional fee, but usually with one or more restricted usage rights. Freeware is in contrast to commercial software, which is typically sold for profit, but might be distributed for a business or commercial purpose in the...

 photo mosaic

Photographic mosaic

In the field of photographic imaging, a photographic mosaic, also known under the term Photomosaic, a portmanteau of photo and mosaic, is a picture that has been divided into rectangular sections, each of which is replaced with another photograph that matches the target photo...

 programme. ... the programme was connected to the Internet and used the search engine Google

Google search

Google or Google Web Search is a web search engine owned by Google Inc. Google Search is the most-used search engine on the World Wide Web, receiving several hundred million queries each day through its various services....

 to locate thousands of images on the basis of search criteria determined by the user, normally images associated with one or several words. In the Abu Ghraib

Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse

Beginning in 2004, human rights violations in the form of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse, including torture, rape, sodomy, and homicide of prisoners held in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq came to public attention...

 photograph, for example, the search engine was given the names of top officials, civilian contractors and enlisted soldiers cited in the ‘Final Report of the Independent Panel to Review DoD Detention Operations’...." His intent was to "make an ironic criticism" of beliefs that people on the Internet "shar[e] an exhaustive, universal, and democratic conscience." Reviews of works in the series were mixed. In 2007, the Simon Wiesenthal Center

Simon Wiesenthal Center

The Simon Wiesenthal Center , with headquarters in Los Angeles, California, was established in 1977 and named for Simon Wiesenthal, the Nazi hunter. According to its mission statement, it is "an international Jewish human rights organization dedicated to repairing the world one step at a time...

 objected to a Googlegram showing the wall in the Palestinian

Palestinian people

The Palestinian people, also referred to as Palestinians or Palestinian Arabs , are an Arabic-speaking people with origins in Palestine. Despite various wars and exoduses, roughly one third of the world's Palestinian population continues to reside in the area encompassing the West Bank, the Gaza...

 West Bank

West Bank

The West Bank ) of the Jordan River is the landlocked geographical eastern part of the Palestinian territories located in Western Asia. To the west, north, and south, the West Bank shares borders with the state of Israel. To the east, across the Jordan River, lies the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan...

 that was a mosaic of photographs of Nazi concentration camps, stating that it was "a smug exercise in banalizing the horrors of the Holocaust

The Holocaust

The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...

." The exhibition traveled widely, including shows in Paris, Naples, Beijing and Arles (France) at the Rencontres d'Arles in 2005.

Deconstructing Osama (2007)

Exhibited at the Pilar and Joan Miró Foundation in Mallorca

Mallorca

Majorca or Mallorca is an island located in the Mediterranean Sea, one of the Balearic Islands.The capital of the island, Palma, is also the capital of the autonomous community of the Balearic Islands. The Cabrera Archipelago is administratively grouped with Majorca...

 in 2007, this project concerned the purported "leader of Al Qaeda

Al-Qaeda

Al-Qaeda is a global broad-based militant Islamist terrorist organization founded by Osama bin Laden sometime between August 1988 and late 1989. It operates as a network comprising both a multinational, stateless army and a radical Sunni Muslim movement calling for global Jihad...

's military wing Dr. Fasqiyta Ul-Junat" who "was in reality an actor and singer named Manbaa Mokfhi who had appeared in soap operas on Arab television networks and was the public face of a MeccaCola

Mecca-Cola

Mecca-Cola is a cola-flavoured carbonated beverage. The flagship product of the Mecca Cola World Company, it is marketed as an alternative to U.S. brands such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola to "pro-Muslim" consumers...

 advertising campaign." He was not actually a terrorist but instead had been "hired to play the role." After Mokfhi disappeared mysteriously, "intelligence services then invented the figure of Osama bin Laden

Osama bin Laden

Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was the founder of the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda, the jihadist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets...

 and his associates in which to create the face of terror."

Fontcuberta himself appears as Ul-Junat / Mokfhi. Furthermore, the name "Fontcuberta, Joan" is similar to the name "Fasqiyta Ul-Junat." The "in-jokes" in the project include the similarity of the names of the photographers Ben Kalish Ezab and Ben Salaad to characters in The Adventures of Tintin, a picture of photographer Martin Parr

Martin Parr

Martin Parr is a British documentary photographer, photojournalist and photobook collector. He is known for his photographic projects that take a critical look at aspects of modern life, in particular provincial and suburban life in England...

 in a keffiyeh

Keffiyeh

The keffiyeh/kufiya , also known as a ghutrah , ' , mashadah , shemagh or in Persian chafiye , Kurdish cemedanî and Turkish puşi, is a traditional Arab headdress fashioned from a square, usually cotton, scarf. It is typically worn by Arab men, as well as some Kurds...

, and the allusion of the “Office of Strategic Impact” in the project to the real Office of Special Plans

Office of Special Plans

The Office of Special Plans , which existed from September 2002 to June 2003, was a Pentagon unit created by Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, and headed by Feith, as charged by then-United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to supply senior George W. Bush administration officials with...

 of the Pentagon

The Pentagon

The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia. As a symbol of the U.S. military, "the Pentagon" is often used metonymically to refer to the Department of Defense rather than the building itself.Designed by the American architect...

.

Selected books by and about Fontcuberta

Books with Fontcuberta's work include the following:

• Fontcuberta, Joan, curator. Idas & chaos: trends in Spanish photography 1920-1945. New York: U.S.-Spanish Joint Committee for Cultural and Educational Cooperation, 1985. ISBN 847483045X.
• Fontcuberta, Joan. Herbarium. Göttingen, West Germany: European Photography, 1985. ISBN 3923283091 (hardcover) or ISBN 3923283075 (paperback) or ISBN 3923283083 (deluxe).
• Fontcuberta, Joan, and Pere Formiguera. Dr. Ameisenhaufen's fauna. Göttingen, West Germany: European Photography, 1988. ISBN 3923283164. With a tan paper cover, this first edition "mimics the look and feel of a scientific study so well that it occasionally appears in libraries and bookstores as a zoology text." It was chosen as "one of the most important photographic publications in modern times." Other editions of the book include:
  • Fauna Secreta. Barcelona: Fundació Caixa de Catalunya, 1989.
  • Fauna. [Sevilla]: Junta de Andalucía, 1989. (Publisher also given as "[Spain]: PhotoVision" or "Seville: The Museum [Museo de Arte Contemporaneo].") ISBN 848662004X.
  • Himitsu No Dobutsushi. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo, 1991. ISBN 4480871543.
  • Fauna. [Utrera, Sevilla]: PhotoVision, 1999. ISBN 8486620155 (Spanish) or ISBN 8486620171 (French) or ISBN 8486620163 (English).
• Història artificial: el cor i les tenebres: Joan Fontcuberta: IVAM Centre Julio González, 26 novembre 1992/24 de gener 1993. [Valencia]: Le Centre, 1992. ISBN 8448200233.
• Fontcuberta, Joan. Le baiser de Judas: photographie et vérité. Arles: Actes Sud, 1996. ISBN 2742708391.
• Fontcuberta, Joan. El beso de Judas: fotografía y verdad. Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 1997. ISBN 8425214807.
• Kondakova, Olga, et al. Sputnik. Madrid: Fundación Arte y Tecnología, 1997. ISBN 8489884005. The book was said to "recall[] the heyday of the great photobooks of El Lissitsky and Alexander Rodchenko
  Alexander Rodchenko
  Aleksander Mikhailovich Rodchenko was a Russian artist, sculptor, photographer and graphic designer. He was one of the founders of constructivism and Russian design; he was married to the artist Varvara Stepanova....
  
  ."
• Fontcuberta, Joan. Joan Fontcuberta: twilight zones. Barcelona: Actar, 1999. ISBN 8495273152.
• Fontcuberta, Joan. Joan Fontcuberta: volte face: a l'envers de la science, les leçons de l'histoire. Marseille: Images en manoeuvres: Centre d'Art, 2000. ISBN 2908445441.
• Zabalbeascoa, Anatxu, and Joan Fontcuberta. The artist and the photograph. Barcelona: Actar, 2000. ISBN 8495273306.
• Fontcuberta, Joan. Contranatura. Alicante, Spain: Museo de la Universidad de Alicante, 2001. ISBN 8495273837.
• Fontcuberta, Joan. Securitas. Madrid: Fundación Telefónica, 2001, ISBN 8489884269. Also Barcelona: Editorial Gustavo Gili, 2001, ISBN 8425218969.
• Caujolle, Christian. Joan Fontcuberta. London and New York: Phaidon, 2001. ISBN 0714840319.
• Fontcuberta, Joan. Photography: crisis of history. Barcelona: Actar, 2002. ISBN 8495273500.
• Fontcuberta, Joan. Joan Fontcuberta: landscapes without memory. New York: Aperture, 2005. ISBN 1931788790.
• Fontcuberta, Joan. Datascapes: Orogenesis/Googlegrams. Sevilla: PhotoVision, 2007. ISBN 9788493154644.
• Fontcuberta, Joan. Deconstructing Osama: the truth about the case of Manbaa Mokfhi. Barcelona: Actar, 2007. ISBN 9788496540903.
• Fontcuberta, Joan. Historias de la fotografía española. Escritos 1977-2004. Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 2008. ISBN 9788425222870.
• Fontcuberta, Joan. Googlegramas. Munich: Galerie von Braunbehrens, 2008. ISBN 978392268499.
• Fontcuberta, Joan. El Libro de las Maravillas. Barcelona: Ayuntamiento de Barcelona y Actar, 2008. ISBN 9788498501261, 9788496954816.
• Fontcuberta, Joan. Albarracín. Santa Iocencia. Holly Innocence. Albarracín: Estancias Creativas, 2009. ISBN 9788461348275.
• Ródenas, Gabri, "Fontcubertin Blow up Blow up: Ekshumacija Antonionija/ Fontcuberta´s Blow up Blow up: Exhuming Antonioni” in Fotografija, Eslovenia, December 2009. ISSN: 1408-3566.

Documentaries

F For Fontcuberta, directed by Gerardo Panichi and Daniele Villa - Citrullo International, produced by Citrullo International, TV de Catalunya, Banff Centre, Jerome Bellavista Productions, 2005

External links

• Zabalbeascoa, Anatxu. Joan Fontcuberta - ArtForum, February 1993.
• Galeria Virtual and Joan Fontcuberta. Topophonia: Terrestrial Music - Barcelona: Pompeu Fabra University, February 1994.
• Fundación Telefónica. Exposición Securitas - c. 2001.