Pandora's Camera Photogr@phy After Photography
The first English translation of a renowned collection of essays by Joan Fontcuberta, in which he considers the technological shift that photography has undergone in recent years. Fontcuberta uses the motif of Pandora's box to conceptualise the capricious nature of photography, and its fickle relationship to truth - employing the Greek myth concerning a large jar containing myriad forms of human unhappiness, or blessings, depending on the version you read. As Pandora's camera, digital technology spells calamity to some and liberation to others; it is blamed for irretrievably discrediting veracity, but at the same time it introduces a new degree of truth. Fontcuberta examines the new principles that have arisen within the digital ecosystem, in critical reflections inspired by the hope that still remains in the notion of a postmodern Pandora's camera - one that might not only describe our environment, but also bring transparency to it.