JOAN FONTCUBERTA
Saturday, March 13, 2021 01:00pm PST
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ABOUT THE PROGRAM
“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.” - Antonio Gramsci
Gramsci’s words provide the launching point for Joan Fontcuberta’s talk with PhotoAlliance, titled Photographic Monstrosities. The lecture will focus on two new projects: Trauma and Prosopagnosia, which the artist describes respectively as poetic and disruptive. Both series address the idea of an old world (analog, light and chemistry based photography) dying, a new world (AI-based, photorealistic images) struggling to be born, and the monstrosities that emerge in our new terra incognita. Registration is required. This event is free and open to the public.
Prosopagnosia is an exploration of GAN technology (Generative Adversarial Networks) applied to image making, challenging viewers to consider: What happens if AI and algorithms supersede the camera and the human eye in the construction of visual culture?
Trauma is an ongoing investigation of deteriorating photographic archives, the most recent of which, Kintsugi, comes from the national Archive of Andorra, and asks the question: What happens when photographs have lost connection with reality and become amnesic?
Both series will be exhibited internationally in 2021—in Andorra, Spain and Lithuania.
About Joan Fontcuberta
Joan Fontcuberta is an internationally acclaimed artist, photographer, writer, curator, and educator based in Barcelona, Spain. For over 4 decades, he has created conceptually driven photographic projects that consistently challenge both the norms of the photographic medium and much broader philosophical questions regarding the dissemination, integrity, and implications of photographic images.
Among his many awards and accomplishments, Fontcuberta received the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography, was made an Officer in the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture, and has been both an exhibitor and the artistic director of Les Rencontres d'Arles.
Fontcuberta's works are held in the permanent collections of many museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago; Center for Creative Photography; George Eastman House; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Musée National d’Art Moderne / Centre Georges Pompidou; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires; Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Museum Folkwang, Essen; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
2021 INTERNATIONAL Lecture Series
For close to two decades, PhotoAlliance has offered wonderful lectures to the Bay Area community, highlighting well-known and celebrated photographers as well as introducing remarkable emerging artists from our community. Unfortunately, the Covid-19 pandemic resulted in the cancellation of most of our 2020 programs. To make a silver lining of this shutdown period we are launching an International Lecture Series for spring 2021. Using the new normal of online programming, each of the artists in our spring series will be “beaming in” from locations throughout the world.
The PhotoAlliance 2021 International Lecture Series is presented in partnership with the San Francisco Art Institute and the San Francisco Artists Alumni.
