Who is Joseph Anton is a series of photomontages using portraits of the three writers, Joseph Conrad, Anton Chekov and Salman Rushdie. The idea for this project was partly inspired by a meeting mounir fatmi had with the writer, Salman Rushdie in Brussels at a book launch for his autobiography titled, Joseph Anton. When Rushdie was forced into hiding following his fatwa, he took on the pseudonym of Joseph Anton, a mix of his two favorite writers, Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekov. The name was part homage and part inspiration for Rushide to continue writing.
Starting with classic portraits of each of these three writers, the images undergo a series of computer generated transformations through the use of former FBI sketch portraiture technology, photographs, drawings, 3D modeling and odd scientific materials including vintage diagrams of skulls. The final black and white images are rather horrid mutations that slightly resemble a swirled Francis Bacon painting meets Silence of the Lambs, with an undertone of a Victorian horror story. The results are all random and fatmi pushed the scanning and editing to its furthest point. There are traces of recognizable features in some images, Rushdie’s glasses and familiar profile, or Conrad’s clipped beard, but otherwise the images are verging on abstraction, as if being erased and rebuilt at the same time.