Googlegram: Niépce
Since the 1970s Fontcuberta has explored the slippery nature of truth in works that cleverly deconstruct the myth of photographic objectivity. Here, he revisits the earliest surviving photograph, Nicéphore Niépce’s View from the Window at Le Gras (1826; Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin), a landmark in the history of visual representation. Fontcuberta created this work by processing the results of a Google Image search for the words “photo” and “foto” through photomosaic software, which generates a tiled picture from a large group of thumbnail images arranged according to chromatic value and density. The result is a composite of ten thousand tiny electronic images that links the photography’s chemical origins to its dematerialized, pixelated present.
Artwork Details
- Title: Googlegram: Niépce
- Artist: Joan Fontcuberta (Spanish, born 1955)
- Date: 2005
- Medium: Chromogenic print
- Dimensions: Image: 120 x 160 cm (47 1/4 x 63 in.)
Frame: 123.2 × 162.6 cm (48 1/2 × 64 in.) - Classification: Photographs
- Credit Line: Purchase, Vital Projects Fund Inc. Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2012
- Object Number: 2012.251
- Rights and Reproduction: © Joan Fontcuberta, 2005
- Curatorial Department: Photographs
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