The Time of Monsters: An Interview with Joan Fontcuberta

Abstract

Throughout his work, Catalan artist Joan Fontcuberta (Barcelona, 1955) has playfully reflected on the presumed truth claim of photography and on the possibilities of manipulation that this allows. In this interview, he discusses the technique of superimposition, most notably in spirit photography from the nineteenth century, and then comments on some works from his recent exhibition Monstres, which was held in Fundació Vila Casas in Barcelona from October 2021 to January 2022. In this exhibition, Fontcuberta’s goal was twofold: to reflect on analogue photography as a perishable medium by using either rotten, burnt or devoured stills; and to interrogate the generation of new images by means of artificial intelligence. This dialogue will focus on some series from the exhibition, such as Trauma and Gastròpoda, in which the use of different conceptual and material layers becomes more noticeable, thus shedding new light on the topic of superimposition.