DANIEL CANOGAR

Author(s): Enric Mira Pastor

Source: Aperture , SPRING 1999, No. 155, OPTICAL ALLUSIONS: NEW PERSPECTIVES IN
SPANISH PHOTOGRAPHY (SPRING 1999), pp. 10-18
Published by: Aperture Foundation, Inc.

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/24472335

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 DANIEL CANOGAR

The first phantasmagoria was created in Paris in 1798 by a scientist

obsessed with optical effects—Etienne-Gaspard Robert, later known as
Robertson. His proto-cinematographic spectacle—using magic lanterns
in a dark room to project spectral images of floating bodies—captivated
European audiences in the first half of the nineteenth century. In the
"salle de la fantasmagorie," terrorized spectators encountered the back
ground sound effects of a storm, a deep voice describing the terrors of the
nether world, and mysterious luminous forms floating over their heads.
Packaged with a gothic narrative, Robertson's show became one of the
greatest spectacles of the early nineteenth century.
Although ghosts were part of quotidian life in preindustrial times, in
Robertson's phantasmagoria the ghosts become internalized. Such
internal ghosts mark the birth of psychoanalysis. I believe that techno
logical ghosts are a relevant metaphor for the hallucinogenic nature of
our media-saturated environment. Layers of visual data surround us
and dismantle barriers between what is real and what is representation.
Virtual reality is the most updated version of phantasmagoria; with this
interactive computer technology, we explore cyberspace through a phan
tom body, challenging notions of corporeality, presence, and physical
boundaries. Our imaging technologies have turned us into ghostly repre
sentations of ourselves. I use light and photography to explore the
trauma and psychological impact produced by such bodily transgressions.

Daniel
Daniel Canogar,
Canogar, Floor
FloorProjections,
Projections,1995
1995

10

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IJ

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Daniel
DanielCanogar,
Canogar,Sensorium
Sensorium
#2,#2,
19931993

Opposite:
Opposite:Daniel
Daniel
Canogar,
Canogar,
Alien
Alien
Memory,
Memory,
1998 1998
Page
Page 14-15:
14-15:Daniel
Daniel
Canogar,
Canogar,
Alien
Alien
Memory,
Memory,
1998 1998

13

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 '

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 Daniel
Daniel Canogar,
Canogar,Floor
Floor
Projection
Projection #2,
#2,1995
1995

Opposite:
Daniel Canogar,
Face, 1993

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 OUR FACES, OUR ORGANS, OUR LIMBS are first and foremost parts
of a feeling, sensitive body, parts of a body that feels and senses at the same
time that it is entrapped in its physical complicity with the world, a body
limited by other bodies and other faces.
In seeking to represent the complex and diversified nature of our sensor
ial contact with reality, Eduard Ibanez offers us a series of photographs like
palimpsests, in which a variety of different images and textures are super
imposed, thus producing a sort of synergy of the visual and the tactile.
The superimposition of images using transparencies and blurs lends a cer
tain ambiguity to the presence of organic forms. In this way the photographs
seem endowed with a sort of perceptual enigma, magnetizing our gaze and
drawing our fingers to them.
In many of the photographs included in "In the Figurative Sense," Ibanez
re-creates the body's transparency—the transparency of hands, ears, and
heads. The texture of cloth fusing with the skin, the outer ear melting into
the mouth of a snail—these are images that reveal the extent to which the
things we sense are grafted onto our flesh. Our bodies are depicted as enti
ties entrapped by things, not imprisoned by them, but confused, blended
with the flesh of the world.

Ibanez proposes an approximation of the human capacity for perception,

as a way of recovering an awareness of our senses and the immediacy of
our sensorial relationship with reality. His photographic images thus attempt
to represent the figures of an internal discourse, the vocabulary of a private
language expressed through corporeal contact with the hard edges of the
world and the physical presence of other bodies.
—Enric Mira Pastor

18

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