Stranger Than Fiction

OCA will hold a study visit to the Science Museum on the 26 September to view Stranger Than Fiction.
It is a major exhibition of Joan Fontcuberta’s conceptual photography and gives students the opportunity to see a wide range of his work.
Fontcuberta challenges the assumption that photography and other sources of evidence constitute Truth. He is a creator of hoaxes and carefully constructed fictions that utilize the visual signs and techniques of photographic genres and eras like 19^th century natural history and botanical specimen photography to convince his viewers of the verity of his creations.

Like Salvador Dali and Maurizio Cattellan, Foctcuberta displays a surreal sense of humour that reminds us of Sigmund Freud’s studies of dreams and the distorted, composite images of the unconscious mind.
“…[Dreams] combine features of the one object with those of the other in a new image, while it makes skilful use of any really existing resemblances between the two objects. The new creation may prove to be wholly absurd, or even successful as a fantasy, according as the material and the wit employed in constructing it may permit.” p.207, S. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900 (Wordsworth Editions, 1997)
And it is exactly this conflation of objects at work here, but not merely for their own visual effect or their possible symbolic meanings, but rather because they elicit our questioning about the possibility of these realities.
This exhibition would interest students working in staged photography, Surealism, photo-manipulation and thinking about photography as evidence and artifice.
See more of Fontcuberta’s work here

To book your place email enquiries@oca-uk.com
View my work here; www.robertenoch.com
 
Image Credits: Joan Fontcuberta