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Joan Fontcuberta / Pere Formiguera: Dr. Ameisenhaufen's Fauna (True First Edition, European Photography) [SIGNED by Fontcuberta]

Publisher: Göttingen, Germany: European Photography / Scientific Division, 1988
Edition: 1st Edition
Binding: Soft cover
Condition: Fine / No dust jacket as issued
Item #: 112922

$750.00

Specifics

First edition, first printing. Signed in black ink on the half-title page by Fontcuberta. Soft cover. Brown paper wrappers with title printed in black on the cover and spine; no dust jacket as issued. Photographs and text (in English) by Joan Fontcuberta and Pere Formiguera. Designed by Tuna Ciner. 84 pp., with 86 black-and-white illustrations. 8-3/4 x 6-3/4 inches. [Cited in Martin Parr and Gerry Badger, The Photobook: A History, Volume II. (London and New York: Phaidon, 2006).]

Condition

Fine.

Description

As David Levi Strauss writes in The Book of 101 Books, "The Catalan artist Joan Fontcuberta has been constructing elaborate historical fictions out of the excess credibility of photographs for some time, effectively (and often hilariously) calling the conventions of photographic believability into question in the process. Fauna is perhaps the most fully realized of these fictions...[This collaborative project] is presented as the recovered archive of a controversial German naturalist named Dr. Peter Ameisenhaufen (the name means 'anthill' in German, just as Formiguera means 'anthill' in Catalan), who travels around the world discovering new species of fantastic creatures and recording them with the help of his photographer Hans von Kubert (Joan Fontcuberta in German). In addition to evidential photographs of the weirdly appropriate hybrid animals, the archive also includes field notes (in German), maps, audio recordings, scientific papers, and other documents."