Franco Fontana
Swimming Pool

Swimming Pool

© Franco Fontana

Swimming Pool
Swimming Pool
ArtistItalian, born 1933
CultureItalian
Titles
  • Swimming Pool
Date1981
MediumChromogenic print
DimensionsImage: 7 3/8 × 11 in. (18.7 × 28 cm)
Sheet: 8 1/4 × 11 5/8 in. (21 × 29.6 cm)
Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by Manfred Heiting, John Parsley, Anne Wilkes Tucker, Clinton T. Willour, and Joan Morgenstern in honor of Denise Bethel
Object number2016.143
Not on view

Explore Further

Department
Photography
Object Type
Description

With its plane of blue-green water broken by dark shadows
and glimpses of sunburnt skin,
Swimming Pool
is a
colorful and complex image. Making visible a deep, still pool of water is a
complicated photographic task. Its transparency makes depth and form difficult to
ascertain. To solve this problem, Franco Fontana carefully composed this photograph,
utilizing limited elements to define the space. The placement of the figure at
the lower right and the shadows cast on the pool bottom create a visual
indication of distance, while the ripples across the water define that obscure
surface. Fontana focuses on these complex visual puzzles. He notes, “Photography
should not reproduce the visible; it should make the invisible visible.”




ProvenanceThe artist; Wendy Watriss and Fred Baldwin, Houston, 1986; [FotoFest Fine Print Auction, Houston, March 21, 2016]; purchased by MFAH, 2016.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
Signed in black marker, recto lower right corner: "Franco Fontana '81"

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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