Joan Fontcuberta

Sputnik (1997)

Ivan Istochnikov, the subject of this photograph, was a Soviet cosmonaut who disappeared in 1968 during a space mission aboard the Soyuz 2 spacecraft. He was erased from official history because the authorities were unable to explain his disappearance. This account was rescued from oblivion by journalist Mike Arena, who had access to declassified documents from the former Soviet Union.

Can you really always believe your eyes? The man in the photograph is not Istochnikov, but Joan Fontcuberta, photographer and creator of this fabricated story of the dematerialized Russian cosmonaut.

For decades, Fontcuberta has been questioning the fact that photography proves that something is real. He questions such a universal concept through works that challenge his viewers’ credibility. Thus, photography is shown as fiction posing as truth, an authenticating tool of an author’s inventions.

Thanks to his questioning of the objectivity of photographs and his unmistakable style when developing his projects, Fontcuberta received the National Photography Award in 1998, as well as the prestigious Hasselblad Award in 2013.

Barcelona, 1955

For forty years the work of Joan Fontcuberta focused on questioning the role of authenticity given to photographic images, something he fully achieved with works such as Sputnik and Sirenas. Considered by many as the Spanish photographer with the greatest international visibility, Fontcuberta insists that the clichés that photography has constructed are completely rooted in our cultural atavisms, and that is why he questions them. He won Spain’s National Photography Award in 1998 and the Hasselblad International Photography Award in 2013.