Joan Fontcuberta on Taxonomic Photography and the Neo-Encyclopedist Impulse

In an interview with Artribune, Catalan artist Joan Fontcuberta discusses the taxonomic dimension of his work, which he describes as a strategy to blur reality and fiction. His series Herbarium (1982-84) ironically references Karl Blossfeldt's Urformen der Kunst (1928), but instead of celebrating nature, it evokes a degraded, artificial world. Fontcuberta explains that his projects, including Constel-lacions (1993-97), Frottogrames (1987-90), and Hemogrames (1998-99), use scientific methods to question the truth of documentary images. He distinguishes between a photographer, who produces images, and an artist, who produces projects requiring a critical mass of images. Fontcuberta's recent book La furia delle immagini. Note sulla postfotografia (Einaudi) analyzes the role of images in an era of compulsive production. He introduces the concept of "neo-encyclopedist" artists who, like D'Alembert and Diderot, aim to introduce rationality into a new age of obscurantism and post-truth. These artists create "work-collections" that group images by kinship, generating meaning through a "poetics of the catalogue" (Umberto Eco). Fontcuberta links this to post-photography, characterized by the dematerialization of the image, the redefinition of authorship, and the proliferation of images. He argues that we must critically manage the avalanche of images to activate those that challenge our circumstances.