Joan Fontcuberta - Stranger Than Fiction

It is very easy to take a stroll though the Stranger Than Fiction exhibition and be amused by the fakery of it all; after all who doesn't enjoy seeing body parts of various animals joined together and shown as real specimens in glass cases; or fake plaster casts of fossilised mermaids, supposedly discovered on archaeological field trips; star charts that are really photographic paper taped to a car windscreen and driven through the night, to end up covered in constellations - that are actually insect smudges...

But, once I saw past the highly creative and entertaining aspect of this exhibition by Joan Fontcuberta I began to ask the real questions. The ones around the notion of truth. How can we know that what is presented to us is real or factual? Just because a museum exhibits an animal in a glass display case or an archive collection of plant photographs should we just blindly accept that they are the real deal? We do though. We treat the museum as a sacred space - one of science, knowledge and learning that isn't to be questioned. We know that science gets it wrong though as over time hypotheses taken as fact can turn out to be proved incorrect. We also assume that science is unbiased and neutral. When people and money are involved science is often used to promote an ideological or political position. Just look at the smoking lobby that for many decades has used science to further its own agenda. Not to mention the whole Eugenics debacle between the world wars.

Religion also gets a scathing sideswipe by Foncuberta. His section on miracles uses digitally manipulated images that show priests surfing on sharks or teaching meercats to read from holy scripts. The photographic documentary proof is there to be seen at the Media Space in the Science Museum - it must be true.

Fontcuberta works very hard in this exhibition to provide supporting documentation and artifacts to back up his work. They help to validate the photographs. If you can read the letter sent to a colleague regarding a mysterious animal species, and then look at the old black and white picture of a white-coated scientist holding it up for the camera, then it is very convincing. As a viewer of the work I found myself sucked into the created worlds of each piece and the minute attention to detail in creating objects, back-story, characters and images.

I can see how these kind of constructed images along with supporting documentation could fit within my own practice. For my next assignment I want to work in a similar way, not only creating staged images but going deeper and making artifacts too that help to substantiate the story that I am trying to tell.

Fontcuberta wants us to look at these representational aspects of our society. How we are so easily duped and controlled by our political leaders and ruling elites. How evidence, records, photographs, are too easily assumed to be a factual representation of the truth that cannot be questioned. We can't question everything. We don't have the time. We have to take on faith that a lot of what we are told is factually correct. But at least it helps to be aware that some, if not most of, the time we are being duped.