Photography

Item Description

Artist: Allan Sekula
Title: Prayer for the Americans #4
Date: 2003/2005
Dimensions: 111.75 x 49 x 2.5 inches
Materials/media: chromogenic print mounted on alu-dibond and framed under plex. Framing is black-finished hardwood.
Ed. 1/5 (2/5 is in a collection in France)

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.

Item Special Note

READ
Allan Sekula's interview with Edward Dimendberg, BOMB 92 (Summer 2005): http://bombsite.com/issues/92/articles/2754

WATCH
Official website of The Forgotten Space, 2010, with trailers, interviews, and reviews: http://www.theforgottenspace.net

Allan Sekula discusses his work at Documenta 12a??http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXvUUK1wxcs

Artist talk on conjunction with the exhibition Allan Sekula: Polonia and Other Fables at the Renaissance Society, Chicago, 2010a??http://vimeo.com/16102840

Allan Sekula in conversation with Kinga Kenig following Sekula's first retrospective in Poland, at Zaketa Gallery in Warsaw, 2009:a??http://vimeo.com/11234891

LISTEN
SON[I]A interview with Allan Sekula, RADIO WEB MACBA, Barcelona, 2011:a??http://rwm.macba.cat/uploads/songs/sonia119_20110127_96.mp3