Costa Llobera Garden, Barcelona

About the Photographer

Fontcuberta, Joan

Spanish, b. 1955

The work of Joan Fontcuberta makes able use of narrative, wordplay, and visual arrangement to press questions about photographic truth and representation. Complementing a history of painstaking photomontage and other fabrication, Fontcuberta also produces straight images of chance encounters and curious juxtapositions. The frost-damaged cacti of Costa Llobero Garden, Barcelona, Spain play with the authenticity suggested by the camera and the dubiousness conjured by an odd and unfamiliar situation. Interpreted as exotic creatures, staged event, or seasonal botanic response, the image and its origins take a second reading in context of Fontcuberta's other projects.

Joan Fontcuberta was born on February 24, 1955 in Barcelona. His work has been widely exhibited internationally, including solo exhibitions at Museo Español de Arte Contemporáneo, Madrid; Musée de l'Elysée, Lausanne; Museum of Fine Arts, Fukui, Japan; The Photographers' Gallery, London; and the Art Institute of Chicago. It is also well-represented in public collections around the world, including those of the Musée d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pomidou, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Ludwig Museum, Cologne; Fons d'Art de la Generalitat, Barcelona; and Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In addition to his activity as artist, critic, and co-founder of Photovision, since 1996 Fontcuberta has also been a professor of audiovisual communication at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra de Barcelona.