Joan Fontcuberta Framed Photograph from "Fauna Secreta" Collection - Surrealist

Joan Fontcuberta was born on February 24, 1955, in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. He is a conceptual artist whose best-known works, such as Fauna and Sputnik, examine the truthfulness of photography. In addition, he is a writer, editor, teacher and curator. Fontcuberta received a degree in communications from the Autonomous University of Barcelona in 1977. Fontcuberta worked in advertising in his early career, and his family had also worked in advertising. From 1979–86, he was a professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Barcelona, after which he earned a living through his art. In 1980, he co-founded the Spanish or English visual arts journal PhotoVision, and he is still Editor in Chief. Since 1993, Fontcuberta has been a professor of audiovisual communication at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. Among other teaching appointments, he was a visiting lecturer in visual and environmental studies at Harvard University in 2003. He was named an Officer in the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture in 1994. His curatorial experience includes serving as the Artistic Director of the Rencontres d'Arles, an international photography festival, in 1996. Fontcuberta exhibited at Les Rencontres d'Arles, France, in 2005 and 2009. One of his fingers is missing as a result, he said in a 2014 interview, to a home-made bomb blowing up in his hand. He says that the missing finger makes him a terrible photographer, although, in 2013, he won the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography.