SEKULA, Allan
Collective Sisyphus

"Allan Sekula is one of the most important figures in modern photography of the second half of the twentieth century. His work focuses on a critique of the links that photography has always maintained with the economy, work and the politics of representation.

From his beginnings in the 1970s, Sekula became a reference by incorporating textuality into photography in a way that had been previously denied it by modern art.

His book ‘Photography Against the Grain: Essays and Photo Works, 1973–1983 (1984)’, a key work of the new photographic discourse of the late twentieth century, enshrined him as one of the least orthodox historians of the medium.

‘Collective Sisyphus: The Case of Allan Sekula’s Ship of Fools / The Dockers’ Museum (2010−2013)’ is a major and long-term research project jointly pursued by M HKA (Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp) and the Lieven Gevaert Research Centre for Photography, Art, and Visual Culture (2014-2019). It has received generous funding by the Research Council of the University of Leuven and by the Research Foundation-Flanders.

English and Spanish text."

Published by Koenig Books, 2017
Monographs / Exhibition Catalogues