Allan Sekula
Erie, Pennsilvania (USA), 1951

Since he abandoned performance art in the early seventies, when he challenged U.S. military policy and the Vietnam War, Allan Sekula’s work has become a reflection on the place and function of reportage in social and artistic contexts. His first photographic series were focused on his own experiences and his immediate surroundings, such as the Chinese restaurant where he worked in This Ain’t China (1974) or the his night school in School is a factory (1978-1980), although his intention was not to document a specific aspect but to extrapolate on general concepts. After an initial phase in the late seventies and early eighties in which he adopted the strategies of conceptual art in his photographs, Sekula, who is also a critic and essayist, turned to investigating the narrative and critical capacity of straight photography and exploring the theatrical element of this photographic genre, which has been mistaken for an objective and neutral representation of the reality it portrays. The conceptual inheritance can be appreciated in his inclination to relate texts and images: the titles of the photographs and the informative panels he introduces into his exhibition projects create political, cultural and personal associations with the images they identify or explain. Sekula tries to distance himself, despite the dramatic situations represented, from the manipulative sentimentalism photojournalism has become. His reportage has a poignant element of censure and it is usually focused on the personal effort of people fighting against the social injustices created by the current tendency toward a globalised economy, or of those who find themselves indirectly immersed, as the wronged party, in daily struggles against the homogenizing strategies of liberal capitalism. This element has led many to consider that his work pertains to social realism, a historically transcendental movement. Some of Sekula’s documentary projects focus on specific events, such as his photographs of the anti-globalisation demonstrations that took place in Seattle in 1999, or his most recent series about the ecological catastrophe caused by the sinking of the Prestige oil tanker on the coast of Galicia, Spain. Others are work-in-progress such as Fish Story (1987-1994) in which he explores the transformations that have come about in the labour conditions of fishermen due to the growing internationalisation of the world economy, or Dead Letter Office (1996-1997), commissioned by InSITE, which is an exhaustive study of the economic, political and social context on the Mexican - U.S. border. S. R.

Conclusion of search for the disabled and drifting
sailboat “Happy Ending”, 1993-2002

This triptych belongs to an ongoing documentary project entitled Fish Story, which began in 1987 and deals with one of the traditional themes of art history, one that had been forgotten during the XX century: the representation of the sea. Sekula, however, does not revel in a romantic and sentimental version of the seascape but focuses instead on the representation of the work of sailors, fishermen and stevedores on the docks and in the merchant and fishing ships, since for this American photographer, the sea is not merely a visual space but a space determined by the economic, commercial and social relationships established there. This interest arises from the fact that, according to Sekula, we have been led to believe that we are living in a post-industrial age, when the truth is that the industrial function has been globalised. This idea has driven him to construct this project as a work-in-progress, in which he explores the new economic geography. In this series, he has captured the daily lives of seamen at the ports of Barcelona, Gdansk, Glasgow, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Newcastle, New York, Pusan, Rotterdam, San Diego, Seoul, Ulsan, Warsaw, Veracruz and Vigo, as well as a voyage he took across the North Atlantic on a cargo ship from New Jersey to Rotterdam. For Sekula, these are the types of ships that have transformed navigation, which have permitted greater internationalisation of merchandise and which have therefore contributed to the homogenisation and globalisation of consumer habits, which has resulted in the gradual dissolution of the distinctions in identities of the inhabitants of different places around the world and, along with other forms of transportation, has enabled industrial production to be shifted from central areas to peripheral ones.
The choice of the format in which three images are united and related responds to the questioning of the documentary language that Sekula initiated in his early works from the seventies. This strategy is similar in its intention to the use of slide projectors when exhibiting his work. The sequence establishes a narrative resembling the cinematographic media. Sekula propounds that the difference between this form of presentation and that traditionally used by documentary work is that it is no longer necessary to concentrate on the representational aspect of one single image but different images can be used to portray one and the same event and, what is more, this obliges the spectator to fill in the blanks, to finish the story and complete its meaning, forcing him/her to abandon his/her passivity as contemplator and participate in what is represented. Likewise, the introduction of frames individualises the moments and the people in the photographs, removing them from the constant industrial rhythm imposed by the apparatus of the slide projector that metaphorically alludes to the steady beat kept at the factory. S. R.

MIDDLE PASSAGE GHOST SHIP Le Corps d’un Américain découvert à bord d’un voilier à la dérive FALMOUTH.- Le corps d’un Américain de 63 ans mort dans des circonstances mystérieuses a été retrouvé samedi à bord d’un voilier dérivant à plus de 1.000 kilomètres au sud-ouest des côtes britanniques, tandis que sa femme ne se trouvait plus à bord. Les gardes-côtes ont précisé que le “Happy End” était enregistré dans l’Alabama et qu’il avait quitté les côtes Américaines le 1er novembre à destination de l’Irlande avec à son bord le propriétaire du bateau, Gerald Hardesty et son épouse Carol, âgée de 60 ans. Un membre d’équipage d’un porte-container américain, le “Sealand Quality” a pu monter sur le voilier repéré à la déirve vendredi par un cargo norvégien et voir le corps du propriétaire du bateau, Gerald Hardesty, mort selon lui depuis deux ou trois jours. Enlarged photocopy of clipping from unidentified Cherbourg newspaper brought aboard by the North Sea pilot and posted by the captain without translation in the officers’ and crew’s mess rooms, Sea-Land Quality. ..........................As the crew filed back into the house from the main deck after the memorial service for the two Americans, the usually taciturn captain announced to no one in particular and everyone in general: “Well, that should put an end to all the ghost stories that have been going around”. FIRE AND EMERGENCY Muster at boat station ABANDON SHIP Muster at station NUCLEAR, BIOLOGICAL, CHEMICAL WARFARE Remain in stateroom Notice engraved on steel plate bolted to stateroom bulkhead, Sea-Land Quality. THE BO’SUN’S STORY ..............“Black and white photos tell the truth. That’s why insurance companies use them.”