Chapter 2: Joan Fontcuberta

Joan Fonctuberta can be described as an important artist not only in his work with photographic archives. The Catalan artist, teacher and theorist has been working with the ambiguity of photographic material since the mid-1980s. The series he began in 2016, Trauma, is a reflection on its transience. For Fontcuberta, the German term 'Trauma' refers to a 'strong psychological shock' or an 'injury to the organism caused by violence' and indicates the soul of the images that go through a life cycle and can also fall ill and die.
In this sense, the archive is also to be understood as a dynamic place, which, through the changeability of the photographic material, constantly produces new states and information. Thus the carrier layer can detach itself from the image, the images become 'phantom images'. With his work 'Trauma' he gives the selected images a new, second life. In Fontcuberta's exhibition presentation, the ongoing chemical change process of the negative material finds a new form as a framed print or illuminated box.

Life cycle of the material