Photofictioned reality. A proposal for a methodological analysis of the art work of Joan Fontcuberta and a case study of the artwork Prosopagnosia

Abstract

Since its beginnings, the work of the artist Joan Fontcuberta has reflected from an eclectic perspective on the nature of the photographic image. Through an eloquent use of the technologies of the image, in many of his works, the photographer has enhanced the objectifying character of photography through the legitimizing capacity of the medium itself, demanding from the viewer a critical and distrustful observation of the images. In this text we carry out a partial study of Fontcuberta's artistic corpus structured by means of four procedural strategies that we have defined and developed. These strategies range from works made by means of more traditional techniques, to other works executed with more current procedures, but where, in any case, the technical and discursive potential of the author is put in value. As part of the last strategy, where some projects are studied in which the preconceived use of some computer programs for the creation of images is altered, we have carried out a case study of the work Prosopagnosia, where an algorithmic system is used for the production of synthetic images, evidencing once again the fictitious character of photography.