Joan Fontcuberta's 'Les Nouveaux Encyclopédistes' at Fotografia Europea 2017

For Fotografia Europea 2017, Spanish photographer and essayist Joan Fontcuberta curated 'Les Nouveaux Encyclopédistes' at the Chiostri di San Pietro in Reggio Emilia, featuring around twenty artists who address the overwhelming saturation of unmediated images in contemporary culture. The project seeks to identify new encyclopedists who, centuries after the rational organization of knowledge in 27 volumes, aim to tame and order the use of images. Works include Mishka Henner's 'Photography Is' (2010), comparing over 3,000 Google image results; Roberto Pellegrinuzzi's 'Mémoires', an installation of approximately 275,000 micro-images from a camera sensor pushed to its limit; Joachim Schmid's 96-volume 'Other People's Photographs'; and Daniel Mayrit's 'You Haven't Seen Their Faces', featuring surveillance footage of London's 100 most powerful people. Separately, 'Archivi del futuro' at Palazzo Da Mosto, curated by Elio Grazioli and Walter Guadagnini, presents seven monographic exhibitions exploring what to preserve and how, with notable works by Daniel Blaufuks, Agnès Geoffray, and Teresa Giannico. Both projects assert that the pairing of archive and order remains necessary and that photography cannot do without it.