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Art Papers LIVE! Lecture Series: Allan Sekula

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Allan Sekula: Critical Realism in a Time of Lies

In this artist's talk, Allan Sekula will provide a close look at a few of the works he made between 1974 and 2010. He will discuss the ways in which they both explore the unstable position of photography within the art system and acknowledge, if not assert, the "worldliness" of the image.

Born in Erie, Pennsylvania in 1951 and based in Los Angeles, Allan Sekula is a photographer, writer-critic, and filmmaker

Since the early 1970s, his works with photographic sequences, written texts, slide shows, and sound recordings have traveled a path close to cinema. At times, they refer to specific films. In other instances, such as his 1973 work Aerospace Folktales, they operate like a “disassembled movie” while resisting the “dictatorship of the projector.” Yet, 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 Tsukiji, titled after the Tokyo fish market: this is in fact the first work that Sekula was willing to call a film. His subsequent films include Short Film for Laos, 2006, and Lottery of the Sea, 2006. His most recent film, The Forgotten Space, has been screened in over 30 festivals worldwide since its premiere at the Venice Film Festival in 2010, where it won a special jury prize.

Sekula’s books include Photography against the Grain, 1984; Fish Story, 1995; Geography Lesson: Canadian Notes, 1996; Dismal Science, 1999; Performance under Working Conditions, 2003; TITANIC’s wake, 2003; and Polonia and Other Fables, 2009. These works range thematically from critical investigations of the history of photography to studies of family life in the grip of the military-industrial complex, branching out into explorations of myths of national identity. 

In addition, his longstanding interest in questions of sovereignty led to a number of widely exhibited works on the global maritime economy, including The Forgotten Space. His extended photographic works on this subject were included in Documenta 11, 2002, and Documenta 12, 2007, in Kassel, Germany.

Allan Sekula has taught in the Cinema Studies Program at New York University, in the now-defunct Department of Photography and Cinema at the Ohio State University, and since 1985, in the Program in Photography and Media at the California Institute of the Arts. 

Allan Sekula's lecture Critical Realism in a Time of Lies is co-sponsored by Georgia Tech, College of Architecture and Visual Arts, American Studies, the Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts and the Visual Scholarship Initiative at Emory University and the Hightower Fund. 

Status

  • Workflow Status:Published
  • Created By:Teri Nagel
  • Created:11/21/2011
  • Modified By:Fletcher Moore
  • Modified:10/07/2016

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