Joan Fontcuberta (born 24 February 1955)[1] is a Spanish conceptual artist and photographer whose best-known works, such as Fauna and Sputnik, examine the truthfulness of photography.

[4] His background in communications and advertising led him to contemplate the relationship between photography and truth, and Fontcuberta believes that humor is an important component of his work.

[17] A review of the exhibition as presented in 1988 at the Museum of Modern Art noted that the evidence presented for the existence of the animals included "photographs... both in their natural habitats and in laboratory situations; detailed field notes, both in the original German and English translations; an occasional skeletal X-ray or dissection drawing; two or three tapes of the animals' cries, and in one case, an actual stuffed specimen".

"[21] In this series, "the images of the cosmos are strewn with a fine stardust",[22] but "what they actually record is dust, crushed insects and other debris that accumulated on the windshield of Mr. Fontcuberta's car.

"[23] In this series, Fontcuberta "imagine[d] and realize[d] photographic works by the four greatest Spanish artists of the twentieth century, namely Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí and Antoni Tàpies.

"[26] The exhibition of artifacts (e.g., photographs) related to "Soyuz 2" was shown in many countries, including Spain, France, Portugal, Italy, Mexico, Japan, and the United States.

On 11 June 2006 television show Cuarto Milenio (Fourth Millennium), Jiménez said (in Spanish) about Istochnikov "the question is why [he was deleted from history], what he had done, why he annoyed [the Soviet government].

"[29][36] At least one Web page states "The Mexican magazine Luna Cornea, Number 14, January/April 1998, p. 58, already displayed the photos and tragic story of the [Soyuz 2] mission as the unalloyed truth.

Fontcuberta wrote about this series: "The idea was to invite friends and people close to me to provide a sample of their blood... [on] a piece of transparent film....

"[4] A review of some photographs from the series stated that they caused the writer to "imagine anonymous blood donors, laboratory procedures, and the possibility of AIDS, or cancer.

"[50] The exhibition, which "depict[ed] model planes carefully mis-constructed by the artist and photographed on 'flights' through outer space,[50] was described as "haunting, poetic and thought-provoking.

"[52] The premise was that Fontcuberta visited a monastery in the Karelia region between Finland and Russia "to unveil the hoax" that it trains students to perform miracles.

[22] One review noted that the series suggests a "crisis in contemporary landscape art... [for example] man's emotional and psychological relationship with a rapidly vanishing natural environment.

In the Abu Ghraib photograph, for example, the search engine was given the names of top officials, civilian contractors and enlisted soldiers cited in the 'Final Report of the Independent Panel to Review DoD Detention Operations'...."[60] His intent was to "make an ironic criticism" of beliefs that people on the Internet "shar[e] an exhaustive, universal, and democratic conscience.

[61][62] In 2007, the Simon Wiesenthal Center objected to a Googlegram showing the wall in the Palestinian West Bank that was a mosaic of photographs of Nazi concentration camps, stating that it was "a smug exercise in banalizing the horrors of the Holocaust.

[66][67] Exhibited at the Pilar and Joan Miró Foundation in Mallorca in 2007,[68][69] this project concerned the purported "leader of Al Qaeda's military wing Dr. Fasqiyta Ul-Junat" who "was in reality an actor and singer named Manbaa Mokfhi who had appeared in soap operas on Arab television networks and was the public face of a MeccaCola advertising campaign.

[71][72] In this exhibition at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Fontcuberta calls into question traditional methods for determining fact and authority.

[73] Joan Fontcuberta's project Trauma "arises from the hypothesis that the images undergo an organic metabolism: they are born, they grow, they reproduce and die to restart again the cycle of life"[74] The subjects of Trauma include photochemical reactions, oxidation stains, fungal proliferation, damaged emulsion: "in short, photographic wounds and scars...Behind diaphanous veils of mold or wedged between water stains, we find the silhouettes of people and landscapes, the original subjects of the photographer’s lens.".