A través del espejo

A través del espejo brings together more than three hundred anonymous self-portraits from the Internet, compiled and edited by Joan Fontcuberta and Joaquín Gallego.

The mirror and the camera, through which the “miracle” of the unified vision of the photographer and his portrait seems to be worked, possess in this varied sample of photographs a double function that makes possible the self-representation and, at the same time, the public dissemination of personal images through the Internet. Individual, couple or group self-portraits, taken in public or private spaces, with cameras or mobile phones that capture different situations, gestures and poses in which the photographer wishes to portray himself, give a good account of the social extension of iconophilia in an era in which the exhibition of the intimate seems to have become the common expression of subjectivity. Accessible to anyone and aimed at the potential gaze of the “other” on the Net, they are reproduced here following the anonymous flow of their circulation on the Internet, in random series that seem to function by accumulation, but whose effect is the annulment or disappearance of the intimate for the sake of the spectacular dimension in which their visibility is promoted.

The texts published alongside these photographs propose different interpretative keys from which to approach a reflection, in the light of these images, on the modes of representation of subjectivity and intimacy. Thus, Joan Fontcuberta, in his foundational essay “La danza de los espejos (identidad y flujos fotográficos en internet)”, establishes a new stage in the interpretation of the history of photography, pointing out in this unprecedented anthropological and visual phenomenon, a before and an after in its historical course.