Allan Sekula

Updated on Sep 28, 2024

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Name Allan Sekula Role Photographer		Movies The Forgotten Space

Died August 10, 2013, Los Angeles, California, United States Education University of California, San Diego (1974) Books Photography against the grain Awards Special Orizzonti Jury Prize, Guggenheim Fellowship for Humanities, US & Canada People also search for Noel Burch, Anthony Hernandez, Vincent Lucassen, Joost Verhey, Ebba Sinzinger, Frank van Reemst

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Allan Sekula (January 15, 1951 – August 10, 2013) was an American photographer, writer, filmmaker, theorist and critic. From 1985 until his death in 2013, he taught at California Institute of the Arts. His work frequently focused on large economic systems, or "the imaginary and material geographies of the advanced capitalist world."

He received fellowships and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Getty Research Institute, Deutsche Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD), Atelier Calder and was named a 2007 USA Broad Fellow.

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Life and work

Sekula was born in 1951 in Erie, Pennsylvania, of Polish and English descent. His family moved to San Pedro, California in the early 1960s. He graduated with his MFA from the University of California, San Diego, in 1974, after having obtained his BA in biology from the same institution. He began making art in the early 1970s, staging performances, building installations, and producing photo series. Sekula practiced what he called "critical realism", informed by Marxist thought, documentary photography, and conceptual art.

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. His works make critical contributions on questions of social reality and globalization, and focus on what he described as "the imaginary and material geographies of the advanced capitalist world". He was a film/video-maker, frequently collaborating with film theorist Noël Burch on projects such as The Reagan Tapes (1984) (with regard to Ronald Reagan), and The Forgotten Space (2010).

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With his work Aereospace Folktales (1973), he began mixing his photographic series with long texts, a form for which he would be particularly well-known. Fish Story (1995) explores the world maritime and forms the basis for much of The Forgotten Space.

He served on the faculty of the Photography and Media Program at the California Institute of the Arts.

Sekula died on August 10, 2013, aged 62, following a long struggle with gastric-esophageal cancer.

Books

Photography Against the Grain: Essays and Photo Works 1973–1983 (1984).

Fish Story (1995).

Dead Letter Office (1997).

Seemannsgarn (2002).

Titanic's Wake (2003).

Performance under Working Conditions (2003).

A Dialogue with Allan Sekula (2005).

Facing the Music: Documenting Walt Disney Hall and the Redevelopment of Downtown Los Angeles. East of Borneo Books, 2015. ISBN 978-0692312445. A project by Sekula. Edited by Edward Dimendberg, with contributions by Sekula, Louis Adamic, James Baker, Laura Diamond Dixit, Anthony Hernandez, Karin Apollonia Müller, Leonard Nadel, and Billy Woodberry.