Today I had the chance to watch the video presentation released by David Fathi for our MA Photography Final Module at Falmouth. The author, with a MA Computer Science and a scientific background, presented his artistic projects “Anecdotal”, “Wolfgang” and “The last road of the immortal woman”.
Listening to his presentation has been intriguing and inspiring, since he provided me with a fresh perspective on the world of photography. His practice is based on research and he recreated, with his practice, a great connection between science and art: a multi-angle and original approach that generated a quite interesting body of work.
Fathi organised his speech by presenting his projects in a chronological order, starting from “Anecdotal”, a book, published in 2015, even if he started working on it since 2013. This project is about nuclear tests and the author was interested in this topic since most of people are unaware that thousands of nuclear bombs has been detonated all around the world, in Nevada, Siberia and Australia for instance, since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is an analysis related to how Countries manage their nuclear arsenal: he represented the nuclear history from a different angle and with a new visual way, a mix of propaganda images and explosions, making them “collide” with an artistic approach.
He started his research from a quote from “Doctor Strangelove” a famous Stanley Kubrick’s political black comedy movie satirizing the Cold War fears of a nuclear conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States:
“People do not react to abstractions, they only react to direct experience”
Stanley Kubrick, “Doctor Strangelove”, 1964, USA.
According to David Fathi, Kubrick was convinced that there is nothing more abstract than atomic bombs, since people relate to them as something distant, almost fictional. People conceive as real only what they can personally experience. The result of his work is a presentation of a series of anecdotes connected to images taken from documentaries, fictional movies and propaganda scenes, all with a similar “noir” post-production. A great example of what he created is a Marilyn Monroe, Miss Atomic bomb, dressed with the classic atomic mushroom. I found this photograph, with a retro style, very effective in its simplicity and it reminded me some classic 1950s propaganda images and some 1970s experimental collage at the same time.

David Fathi, Anecdotal, Guest Lecture (Research) – David Fathi/Wendy McMurdo, 2018, screenshots. ©David Fathi, 2018.
His approach is very different if we compare his work to Sarah Pickering’s “Explosions” not only because, in some cases, Fathi used actually occurred atomic explosions to create fictional images, while Pickering used pyrotechnic tests to recreate explosions that could be perceived as real; also their styles are absolutely different: Fathi’s is more retro and is connected to real anecdotes creating a link between images and texts, Pickering’s production is more surreal. While one author is analysing historical events through images, the other is showing pyrotechnic testing sites leaving readers to imagine stories behind her photographs. The documentary approach is definitely stronger in Fathi’s case.
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David Fathi, Anecdotal, 2015, Maria Inc, Paris, France. ©David Fathi, 2015./Sarah Pickering, Explosions, Fires and Public Order, 2010, Aperture, New York, USA. © Sarah Pickering, 2010. Selection of images from the books, slideshow.
Even more interesting his project titled “Wolfgang”, a 2016 book exploring the lines between facts and fiction.
David Fathi discovered the image-archive created by CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research located Geneva. The Organisation released this archive online and it covers their work and experiments from mid-1950s to early 1980s. Those photos are simply fascinating and, as also the author himself stated, they almost seem extrapolated from a science-fiction movie, even if they are portraying actual experiments.
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David Fathi, Wolfgang, Guest Lecture (Research) – David Fathi/Wendy McMurdo, 2018. ©David Fathi, 2018. Screenshots, slideshow.
The author tried to find a common theme and the title was originated by the name of one of the founders of quantum physics, Wolfgang Pauli, who died right before the archive was created and who still lives thanks to it. At CERN they have an anecdote about the so called “Wolfgang Pauli effect”, who narrates that when he would enter a room, machines would break down and experiments would fail. The fact is that some researchers seemed superstitious enough to ban him from their labs and Pauli himself started believing this as we know from a discussion occurred with Carl Jung: something that the author found extremely surprising since Pauli should have had a rigorous scientific approach to life being a physicist, and yet he was religious and interested in mystic.
He started finding accidents portrayed by the archive’s images and he related them to Pauli somehow, using “The Wolfgang Pauli effect” as a line to connect all photographs and as central theme of his research. Fathi created a fascinating photographic book narrating the story of this scientist through images, connecting science and fiction through those images and using a catchy layout. He recreated some accidents in the making of the publication and in the creation of the project itself, also during live presentations, like using glitch rather than actual photographic images.
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David Fathi, Wolfgang, 2016, Skinnerbooks, Jesi, Italy. Selection of images from the book, slideshow. ©David Fathi, 2016.
Anyway, it is in the third project he presented that I found some similarities with “I can hear you now”.
With “The last road of the immortal woman” Fathi wanted to challenge himself and switch from his usual publication-oriented work to the creation of an art installation.
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David Fathi, The last road of the immortal woman, Installation view – Les Rencontres d’Arles, 2017, Arles, France. ©David Fathi, 2017. Slideshow.
The researcher, during his presentation, explained that this project is based on the story of Henrietta Lacks, known as “The immortal woman”, passed away due to an aggressive form of cancer. Her doctor took a sample of her tumour to analyse it in his lab and, since human cells decay after a certain number of divisions, he put them in a culture and this made them double becoming “immortal”. These cells helped researchers all over the world to find a cure for Polio, to test beauty products and they have also been sent to space.
Lacks’ family was struggling with racial and economical problems, and her descendants knew nothing about the situation until a researcher went and visit them to ask some questions about their ancestor. Someone was selling their genetic material and they were completely unaware of the whole situation. They eventually tried to retake possession of their own story and some criticism and questions about ethical conduct started to arise.
The author, in his representation of the journey of the immortal woman, started from The Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore to the family cemetery in Virginia at Henrietta Lacks’ grave. Lacks was mortal and immortal at the same time: while her physical body was mortal, her cells became immortal due to researchers’ work. He wanted to represent the luminal space and the relationship between mortality and immortality, artistic and scientific, personal and political, as the author pointed out.
In the approach used in the creation of his art-installation I found the first similarity with my project: both our exhibition want to be a path to be followed. In his case viewers can walk between dark landscapes and walls full of written information and data placed in front of them, in my case the audience undertake a self-analysis path while analysing the different steps of my project. The common point is that the order in which contents should be consumed is defined, since they have been created to enhance and stimulate an emotional and intellectual response. Fathi wanted the audience to go through the space and see the artistic side and the scientific one all at once, “I can hear you now” is created to force viewers to go through a “visual space” and face the outside and the inside, themselves and “the other” at the same time.

David Fathi, The last road of the immortal woman, Guest Lecture (Research) – David Fathi/Wendy McMurdo, 2018, screenshots. ©David Fathi, 2018.
While the video Fathi created for this art-installation represented its conclusion, in my case my brief video-documentary represents a starting point, a sort of introduction of the project and visual representation of its subject matter and author at the same time.

David Fathi, The last road of the immortal woman, Guest Lecture (Research) – David Fathi/Wendy McMurdo, 2018, screenshots. ©David Fathi, 2018.
Going back to David Fathi’s work, I found fascinating his idea to photograph, in Paris, the cells of Henrietta Lacks through a microscope and then to apply those photographs on his dark, almost nocturnal, landscapes. He made them become almost a vision, unreal, and yet we are observing a scientific procedure at the same time. Each cell visually becomes almost a will-o’-the-wisp floating in those places related to Lacks’ mortal and immortal lives. Texts here are vital to make us understand what we are actually observing and in their creation the artist focused his attention on five keywords: SELECTION, CONTAMINATION, MUTATION, APPROPRIATION, SPACETIME. They are all equally important to understand the personal, scientific and artistic perspectives, even if he conceived the concept of “Appropriation” as more important, especially because he felt he was acting, at some point, as one of “those white men who come, take what they want and go away” (Fathi, 2018), something that Henrietta Lacks must have experienced not only after her death, but throughout her whole life. This uncomfortable feeling became stronger while he was photographing her grave. It is a feeling I can totally relate with: I felt uncomfortable while portraying myself or performing for my video-documentary, but at the beginning of my work I experienced this feeling especially while portraying other individuals and probably, if they would not have said that the process was actually useful to them, I would have stop in undertaking that path.
Facing David Fathi’s body of work gave me the same strong impression I experienced while observing Sarah Pickering’s projects: their works are so strong, so meaningful and so powerful that I felt almost daunt. I re-experienced that sense of awkward while observing my own practice, over-judging myself and thinking, once more, that I want to make my project stronger and that in the future I want to experiment more to reach a higher professional and artistic level.
Fathi, talking with Professor McMurdo about his work with archives, stated that it is important not being seduced and controlled by images but to define what we want to represent and select and use them according to our aims and goals: this is something I am already doing and I realised how difficult is to select only some images and contents among the ones we create. We can be fascinated by a vast amount of images or to experience a sense of attachment to the work we make, but we must remember that only some of our photographs and videos can be released in the public domain to make our projects become actually effective.
References:
CERN, The Wolfgang Pauli Archive, http://library.cern/archives/Pauli_archive
Fathi David, Anecdotal, 2015, Maria Inc, Paris, France.
Fathi David/McMurdo Wendy, Guest Lecture (Research) – David Fathi, 2018, video released on Canvas for academic purposes.
Fathi David, official website http://www.davidfathi.com/
Fathi David, The Last Road of the Immortal Woman, 2017, art installation at Les Rencontres d’Arles, France. Information on David Fathi’s official website, dedicated area http://www.davidfathi.com/lastroad.php
Fathi David, Wolfgang, with an essay by Jeffrey Ladd, 2016, Skinnerbooks, Jesi, Italy.
Kubrick Stanley, Doctor Strangelove, 1964, Prod. By Stanley Kucbrick and distributed by Columbia Picture, USA/UK.
Pickering Sarah, official website http://www.sarahpickering.co.uk/index.html
Pickering Sarah, Explosions, Fires and Public Order, 2010, Aperture, New York, USA.