Against Barthes: The Eye and the Index german artist to scenes showing refugees boarding

to scenes showing refugees boarding rescue boats off the coast of Libya or gathered along the shores of Turkey under cover of darkness

Designed to emulate Sofia Coppola’s personal diary

Richard Billingham to Tom Wood

“The Body and the Archive” (1986)

Against Barthes: The Eye and the Index german artist to scenes showing refugees boardingThe gesture of pointing is the perfect embodiment of photographys function as a visual document: an injunction to look at this. In this textual and visual essay, artist Joan Fontcuberta takes the index finger as his point of departure for an insightful and irreverent consideration of photographys relation to indexicality. He refutes, as well as draws on, Roland Barthess suggestion that every photograph tells us this has been (a a t), reckoning with