Ferox – The Forgotten Archives by Nicolas Polli

In Ferox – The Forgotten Archives 1976–2010, Nicolas Polli explores the boundaries between reality and fiction and raises the question of how to evaluate the authenticity of images. Fascinated by spatial photography, the artist reflects on the complexity of the information produced by photos of the planet Mars, and the trust we place in the images produced by NASA. Ferox – The Forgotten Archive is the reconstruction of an archive belonging to a fictional space agency called IEMS. The photographer explores how important the ‘reality’ of the material presented is. Is it easy to falsify reality? What kind of information do we need to trust what an image represents?

In order to support this visual archive, the photographer has created a website and a book. The website, in open source, allows visitors to view and reuse the material, its aim being to observe how the archives are used. The book contains a selection of the created visual material put into context using tests, data and diagrams – again entirely imaginary.

Initially a Master project at ECAL, Ferox – The Forgotten Archive was published in book fromby Skinnerboox in collaboration with Ciao Press.