Joan Fontcuberta, SCHERZI DELLA NATURA, 2001

When we look at a photograph are we sure of what we see or is it not possible to doubt the veracity of the document?

Joan Fontcuberta has long been concerned with inoculating, with her images and her installations, the doubt of reality, of safety in perception and vision. The projects presented in this book – Sputnik, Constellations, Emogrammes, Fauna, Herbarium and others – are real small, amusing treatises on the “pedagogy of doubt”.

With fine and impertinent humor, and using the same strategy as a magician, Fontcuberta reveals to us the tricks – political, ideological, epistemological – with which the illusion is confused with reality and shows us how science, history and the document – especially if photographic – are completely reliable. Photographs, real / fake “historical” documents, installations and exhibits, compose an engrossing staging and draw a fun and unusual itinerary, always bordering between truth and doubt.