Joan Fontcuberta

Joan Fontcuberta (Barcelona, 1955) is an artist, essayist, professor, and exhibition curator. His creative work is focused on conflicts between nature, technology, photography, and truth, and has been the subject of numerous individual showings and single-subject publications over four decades. Of particular note are those held at institutions such as the MoMA in New York (1988); the Musée Cantini in Marseille (1990); the Art Institute of Chicago (1990); the IVAM in Valencia (1992); the MNAC in Barcelona (1999); the MUA in Alicante (2001); the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome (2001); and ARTIUM in Vitoria (2003). Among his most recent individual exhibitions were at the Hasselblad Center in Gothenburg (2013); Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris (2014); the Science Museum in London (2014); Cosmocaixa in Barcelona (2015); the Museum Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt (2015); Canal de Isabel II in Madrid (2015); the Museo de la Universidad de Navarra in Pamplona (2016); DA2, in Salamanca (2016); the Galeria Àngels Barcelona (2016); the Museo de Arte del Banco de la República in Bogotá (2016); and the Palazzo Boncompagni / Bienal Fotografia e Industria, Fundazioni Mast, in Bologna (2017).

His work is found in collections such as those at the MoMA (NY), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY), San Francisco's MoMA, the National Gallery of Art (Ottawa), the Folkwang Museum (Essen), the Musée National d’Art Contemporain – Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), the MEP (Paris), the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), MACBA (Barcelona), and MNCARS (Madrid).

In terms of teaching, he has acted as a guest professor at various international institutions such as Harvard University and Le Fresnoy. Centre National des Arts Contemporains, in France. He has published various books with themes relating to the history, aesthetics, and teaching of photography, of particular note being El beso de Judas. Fotografía y Verdad (Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 1997); La cámara de Pandora. La fotografí@ después de la fotografía (Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2010); and La furia de las imágenes. Nota sobre la postfotografía (Galaxia Gutemberg, Barcelona, 2016), which will be published by Einaudi.

He has acted as artistic director of biennales such as Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie d’Arles (the world's most important photography festival) and Mois de la Photographie in Montreal.

In 2013, Joan Fontcuberta was honoured with the Hasselblad Foundation international award. In Spain, he has received the National Photography Award (1998) and the National Essay Award (2011). In 2012, he received the Visual Arts National Culture Award from the Catalonian Government, in 2015, the Culture Award (Photography) from the Community of Madrid, and in 2016, the Barcelona City Award in Humanities.

www.fontcuberta.com