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Long out of print, this seminal collection of essays and photographs are by artist, theorist and filmmaker, Allan Sekula. Originally published by the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1984, in these essays and images Sekula sought to portray the inextricable bond between labour and material culture, drawing deeply on Marxist theory to argue passionately for a collective model of progress. Sekula taught at California Institute of Arts (CalArts) from 1985 until his death in 2013, and from that insider's position he critiqued photography and the circumstances of its production and consumption, exposing what the medium failed to represent - women, labourers, minorities and the institutional structures that reinforce cultural biases. Allan Sekula (1951-2013) was an American artist, whose work spans multiple media: long form photographic series (Aerospace Folktales, 1973; School as a Factory,1980; War Without Bodies, 1991/96), critical texts (The Body and the Archive, 1986 and Debating Occupy, 2012) and film (The Forgotten Space, 2012).
Published to accompany an exhibition held at Witte de With, Centre for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, 21 January -12 March 1995, Fotografiska Museet in Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 6 May - 27 August 1995, Tramway, Glasgow, 6 October - 12 November 1995, Le Channel, Scene Nationale and Musee des Beaux Arts et de la Dentalle, Calais, 16 December 1995 - 25 February 1996.
This publication intersperses essays from scholars, historians, and thinkers with a selection of Allan Sekula's seminal texts and excerpts from his private notebooks. The title is a reference to Okeanos -- son of Gaia, the Greek goddess of the earth -- who ruled over the oceans and water. Made and written across the decades, Sekula's sketches and texts focus on maritime space and the material, economic, and ecological implications of globalization. In projects such as his magnum opus Fish Story (1989-95), or films like Lottery of the Sea (2006) and The Forgotten Space (2010), Sekula provided a view from and of the sea. This publication expands on these oceanic themes, seeking to honor the sc...
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Sekula's final work dedicated to labor solidarity in and around the docks Ship of Fools / The Dockers’ Museum is the project on which the US artist and writer Allan Sekula worked during the last three years of his life (2010–2013). The work consists, first, of a corpus of thirty-three framed photographs and two slide projections of in total over one hundred images, all made by the artist (Ship of Fools); second, it contains a gigantic collection of various objects, graphic images, postcards, and prints which the artist purchased, mostly online (The Dockers’ Museum). Sekula dedicated this work to both historical and contemporary labor solidarity in and around the docks. At the time of h...
As scratches of reality, Sekula's photographs and films leave their traces in our minds. They encourage, yes, even force reflection, and through that, slow changes can probably become a reality, certainly at the level of the individual.
"On the surface, our society looks much different than it did when Allan Sekula began writing criticism and making photographic works. In the late 1960s and early 1970s there was an identifiable counterculture, struggling, for example, to end the war in Vietnam. By contrast, today's social fabric seems both less tattered and more opaque. We can no longer identify a specific ""enemy"" as a tangible force that can be grasped or pictured, and perhaps it is even harder now to recognize our own complicity."
This work is an account of the most intense popular uprising since the protests against the Vietnam War, exploring the convergence and victory of trade unionists, environmentalists, human rights advocates and farmers over the WTO in Seattle.
Constantin Meunier's monument to labour at the 1909 Meunier Exhibition in Leuven / Sura Levine. - Constantin Meunier and Leuven (1887-1897): a love-hate relationship / Marjan Sterckx. - Dilemma between engagement and creativity / Virgine Devillez. - 'Social realism' then and now: Constantin Meunier and Allan Sekula / Hilde van Gelder. - Globalisation and social rights/ Eva Brems. - Meunier and the new social question / Marc De Vos.