Joan Fontcuberta's 'Cultura di polvere' in Venice

Joan Fontcuberta's exhibition 'Cultura di polvere' at an unspecified venue in Venice showcases his photographs of photographs from the archive of Prince Francesco Chigi Albani della Rovere. The project originated during a residency at the ICCD in Rome, where Fontcuberta was struck by the deteriorated, unrecoverable images. He rephotographed these damaged plates without manipulation, creating lightbox works that visualize the corrosion of memory and the material agony of photography. The title references Man Ray's 'Élevage de poussière' (1920), which depicted dust on Marcel Duchamp's 'The Large Glass'. Critic David Campany described that photo as symbolizing the end of an order and the dawn of a new era. Fontcuberta's work similarly pays tribute to analog photography's materiality, contrasting with the digital age where, paraphrasing Guy Debord, reality and image become interchangeable. The exhibition includes mountain views, skeleton montages, solitary figures, and abstract radiographs, all derived from objective rephotography.