In 1985, Joan Fontcuberta and the writer Pere Formiguera rediscovered the lost archives of the German zoologist Peter Ameisenhaufen – born in Munich in 1895 and mysteriously disappeared in 1955 – and of his assistant Hans von Kubert.

During the research he carried out throughout his life, Ameisenhaufen discovered fantastic and rare animals, such as the Ceropithecus icarocornu, resembling a monkey but with a frontal horn and wings, a sacred animal of the Nygala‑Tebo indigenous people, for whom it represents the reincarnation of Ahzran (the one who comes from paradise); or the infamous Solenoglypha polipodida, a twelve‑legged viper, extremely aggressive and venomous, which hunts to feed itself or even simply for the pleasure of killing, favouring attacks at the very moment when its prey is performing the physiological function of defecation.

Fauna presents photographs of the animals catalogued by the zoologist at key moments of their activity, meticulous field studies, the scientist’s working notes, as well as X‑rays and dissections of skeletons.

Is it then a useful tool for enthusiasts of the most incredible animal species, or an exceptionally credible scientific and epistemological fiction? Inserting itself perfectly within Fontcuberta’s artistic career, Fauna creates a wondrous artefact designed to question the authority of scientific discourse and the scarce, if not non‑existent, neutrality of the photographic image.

When the installation was first shown in 1989 at the Museum of Zoology in Barcelona, a survey conducted by its Education Department revealed that 27% of the visitors – all of them university‑educated – believed, after seeing the work by the two artists, that the animals actually existed in nature.