Allan Sekula

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Allan Sekula, Self-Portrait (Lendo, 12/22/02), 2002-03, cibachrome, 15 x 21".
Born January 15, 1951(1951-01-15)
Erie, Pennsylvania, United States
Died August 10, 2013(2013-08-10) (aged 62)
Los Angeles, United States

Allan Sekula (1951-2013) was an American photographer, writer, filmmaker, theorist and critic. From 1985 until his death, he taught at California Institute of the Arts.

From the early 1970s, Sekula’s works with photographic sequences, written texts, slide shows and sound recordings have traveled a path close to cinema, sometimes referring to specific films. However, with the exception of a few video works from the early 70s and early 80s, he has stayed away from the moving image. This changed in 2001, with the first work that Sekula was willing to call a film, Tsukiji, a “city symphony” set in Tokyo’s giant fish market.

His books range from the theory and history of photography to studies of family life in the grip of the military industrial complex, and in Fish Story, to explorations of the world maritime economy. (Source)

Sekula began staging performances and creating installations in the early 1970s. Heavily influenced by the ports of San Pedro, Sekula’s works often focused on the shipping industry and ocean travel.

Sekula's principal medium was photography, which he employed to create exhibitions, books and films. His secondary medium was the written word, employing essays and other critical texts in concert with images to create a multi-level critique of contemporary late capitalism.

Publications

Photography Against the Grain: Essays and Photo Works 1973-1983, Halifax, 1984, PDF.
Fish Story, 1995/2002, Log, PDF.
Books and catalogues
  • Photography Against the Grain: Essays and Photo Works, 1973-1983, Halifax: Press of Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1984, 259 pp., PDF.
  • Fish Story, Düsseldorf: Richter, 1995; 2nd ed., rev., 2002, 206 pp, PDF, Log.
    • Seemannsgarn, trans. Wolfgang Himmelberg, Düsseldorf: Richter, 2002, 208 pp. (German)
  • Allan Sekula: Dead Letter Office, Rotterdam: Nederlands Foto Instituut, 1997, 54 pp. (English)/(Dutch)
  • Geography Lesson: Canadian Notes, MIT Press, 1997.
  • Dismal Science: Photoworks 1972-1996, Illinois: Illinois State University, 1999, 212 pp.
  • Titanic's Wake, Cherbourg-Octeville: Point du jour, 2003, 119 pp. (English)/(French)
  • Performance under Working Conditions, ed. Sabine Breitwieser, Ostfildern-Ruit: Generali Foundation/Hatje Cantz, 2003, 352 pp. [1] (English)/(German)
  • Polonia and Other Fables / Polonia i inne opowieści, ed. Karolina Lewandowska, Chicago: The Renaissance society at The University of Chicago, and Warsaw: Zache̜ta National Gallery of Art, 2009, 117 pp. (English)/(Polish)
  • Ecrits sur la photographie: 1974-1986, trans. Marie Muracciole, Paris: Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, 2013. (French)
  • Ship of Fools / The Dockers' Museum, Leuven University Press, 2015, 240 pp. [2]
  • Facing the Music: Documenting Walt Disney Hall and the Redevelopment of Downtown Los Angeles, ed. Edward Dimendberg, East of Borneo Books, 2015.
Selected articles
  • "On the Invention of Photographic Meaning", Artforum 13:5 (Jan 1975), pp 36-45; repr. in Photography in Print, ed. Vicki Goldberg, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1981, pp 452-473; repr. in Thinking Photography ed. Victor Burgin, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1982, pp 84-109; repr. in Sekula, Photography Against the Grain, 1984, pp 3-21.
  • "Dismantling Modernism, Reinventing Documentary (Notes on the Politics of Representation)", The Massachusetts Review 19:4 (Dec 1978), pp 859-883; repr. in Photography, Current Perspectives, ed. Jerome Liebling, Light Impressions, 1978, pp 231-255; repr. in Sekula, Photography Against the Grain, 1984, pp 53-75.
  • "The Traffic in Photographs", Art Journal 41:1 (Spring 1981), pp 15-25.
  • "Reading An Archive: Photography Between Labour and Capitalism", 1983; repr. in The Photography Reader, ed. Liz Wells, New York: Routledge, 2003, pp 443-452.
  • "The Body and the Archive", October 39 (Winter 1986), pp 3-64.
  • "Michael Asher - Down to Earth" Michael Asher – Kunstraum, ed. Martin Fritz, Vienna: Kunstraum, 1996, pp 30-35; repr. in Afterall 1, London, Autumn/Winter 2000.
  • "Between the Net and the Deep Blue Sea (Rethinking the Traffic in Photographs)", October 102 (Autumn 2002), pp 3-34.
  • "La política de la fotografía", trans. Elena Llorens Pujol, in Efecto real: debates posmodernos sobre fotografía, ed. Jorge Ribalta, Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 2004, pp 35-64. (Spanish)
  • "Debating Occupy", Art in America (June/July 2012), p 103.
  • "An Eternal Esthetics of Laborious Gestures", Grey Room 55 (Spring 2014), pp 16-27.
  • "Photography and the Limits of National Identity", Grey Room 55 (Spring 2014), pp 28-33.

Films

  • A Short Film for Laos, 2006. [3]
  • The Forgotten Space, 2010. [4]

Interviews

Literature

Links