The opening will take place on Wednesday, November 24, at 6:30 PM at the Área Talleres of the Poblenou Campus. The event will feature Joan Fontcuberta, photographer; Oriol Amat, Rector of UPF; Jordi Balló, Director of the Department of Communication at UPF; and Àlex Susanna, Art Director of the Fundació Vila Casas.

The exhibition “Evidència” by Joan Fontcuberta, born from the agreement between Pompeu Fabra University and the Fundació Vila Casas, inaugurated the Galeria Área Talleres and forms a diptych with “Monstres”. Exhibited at the facilities of the Fundació Vila Casas, “Monstres” is the University’s first collaboration with the institution to promote interaction between art and research, involving students and professors of Audiovisual Communication and artists from the “En Residència” program.

November 25, 2021 – March 31, 2022
Galeria Área Talleres

EVERY PHOTOGRAPH AS EVIDENCE

Every photograph represents the observation of a fact: what it shows has happened in front of the camera. This apparent obviousness is precisely what underpins the ontological framework of photography’s documentary function. It is this evidential force that makes photographs suitable for use in identity documents or to illustrate news in the press.

From a historical and cultural perspective, photography established a mimetic pact with reality. Yet, if we look closely, we must agree that photographs are images composed of shapes, textures, and colors, more or less ordered, which a visually literate observer can interpret. Or perhaps it is not so simple, which is why current image recognition software is often so inadequate. It is easy to describe what we see using limited sets of conventional labels or semantic categories. But it is impossible, on the other hand, to assign plausible meanings when the context is unknown. A photograph without context becomes an ambiguous statement and, therefore, a stimulus for the imagination.

Here, a series of photographs from the archive of the Mexican magazine Alarma!, specialized in ‘blood and guts’ topics, is presented. Deprived of captions, unaware of the situation and circumstances in which they were taken, and without any data beyond their origin, these images no longer testify to anything but their own ambiguity: they are no longer documents but monuments to wild speculation.

THE GAME OF STORYTELLING

An image is always a screen on which we project our prior experience and is therefore subjected to a kind of Rorschach test – the psychological test in which we are asked what meanings we perceive in abstract shapes.

Any photograph can thus become the beginning of a story. Here, we are invited to take on that challenge. What do these photographs seem to tell us? What do they suggest? What could be their little story? Surely, each person will offer different interpretations depending on their knowledge and creativity, demonstrating how photographs can be evidence (?) of many things at once.

The exhibition includes a video in which different professionals comment on the photographs without knowing their origin or context. From their various perspectives, a range of possible interpretations emerges, detaching the photographs from their documentary function and highlighting their profound ambiguity.

EXHIBITION CREDITS
Concept and Work: Joan Fontcuberta
Art Direction FVC: Àlex Susanna
Coordination: Mercè Vila Rigat and Albert Elduque Busquets
Exhibition Design: Guri_Casajuana
Press and Communication: Neus Pérez Garcia and Diana Juanpere Dunyó
Graphic Image: Bàrbara Astals
Production and Signage: EGM
Insurance: Hiscox

VIDEO CREDITS
The video was produced by the MOVEP research project (Visual Motifs in the Public Sphere. Production and Circulation of Images of Power in Spain, 2011–2017), funded by the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness and the AEI (Agencia Estatal de Investigación/FEDER, EU), with principal investigators Professors Jordi Balló and Ivan Pintor.

Direction: Ana Aitana Fernández, Marc Samper, and Carolina Sourdis, based on the conceptualization and script by Joan Fontcuberta and Jordi Balló
Production: Teresa Roig
Director of Photography: Marc Samper
Editing: Carolina Sourdis