Fontanesi: Unveiling the Enigmatic World of Split Screen Collages

The captivatingly simple split screen collages of Fontanesi. Little is known about this anonymous photographer and collage artist who takes the all too familiar method of stitching two images together and creates a body of work that feels different and worthwhile. The only official information we can find is on an old website which tells us nothing and perhaps everything we need to know. Fontanesi. It’s a place in Fontanesi where you can meet Fontanesi and take pics of Fontanesi. The foreword from the artist’s 400 page book Grandissima Selezione or Huge Selection sheds a little more light in an abstract sort of way. I think of Fontanesi as a 16th century illustrator who went faced with the task of representing a whale, realises not only must he depict something which he has never seen, but something which bears no relation to that which swims, runs or flies the earth. And so before the mysterious and the unknown, he must invent his own cetology using the tales and descriptions of the sailors.