Allan Sekula

Allan Sekula was born 1951 in the USA, lived and worked in Los Angeles. He was a photographer, film maker, theoretician and art critique.

Not only since his participation at the documenta 11 and 12, has his work been highly discussed in the context of contemporary art dealing with socio-economic and cultural changes within globalized economy and policy. Through his photography, the artist, theoretician and scholar aspires to “reinvent the documentarism in ways that differ from the tradition of social documentary as well as from artistic photography and conceptual thinking.” (Allan Sekula, Interview with Benjamin H.D. Buchloh) Sekula’s work is held in numerous collections including the Thyssen-Bornesmisza Art Contemporary, Vienna, the Whitney Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, the Centre Pompidou, Paris, MACBA, Barcelona, the Museum Folkwang, Essen, and the ARCO Foundation, Madrid.

Books

• Photography against the Grain: Essays and Photo Works 1973–1983, 1984.
• Fish Story, 1995, 2002.
• Dead Letter Office, 1997.
• Seemannsgarn, 2002.
• Titanic's Wake, 2003.
• Performance under Working Conditions, 2003.
• A Dialogue with Allan Sekula, 2005.
• Polonia and Other Fables, 2009.

Selected articles

• "Reading An Archive:Photography between labour and capitalism", The Phtographer reader (ed. Liz Wells), Chap. 42: 443-452.
• "The Traffic in Photographs", Art Journal, Vol. 41, No. 1, Photography and the Scholar/Critic (Spring, 1981): 15-25.

Literature

• http://www.traversee.com/Kuenstler/Allan_Sekula/AS.html

Links

• Sekula on Wikipedia
• Sekula on The forgotten space