Allan Sekula Quotes

#1. Documentary is thought to be art when it transcends its reference to the world, when the work can be regarded, first and foremost, as an act of self-expression on the part of the artist.

Allan Sekula

#2. The photograph is an incomplete utterance, a message that depends on some external matrix of conditions and presuppositions for its readability.

Allan Sekula

#3. Photography promises an enhanced mastery of nature, but photography also threatens conflagration and anarchy.

Allan Sekula

#4. The making of a human likeness on film is a political act.

Allan Sekula

#5. The only objective truth that photographs offer is the assertion that somebody or something ... was somewhere and took a picture.

Allan Sekula

#6. Documentary photography has amassed mountains of evidence. And yet ... the genre has simultaneously contributed much to spectacle, to retinal excitation, to voyeurism, to terror, envy and nostalgia, and only a little to the critical understanding of the social world.

Allan Sekula

#7. Black-and-white photos tell the truth. That's why insurance companies use them.

Allan Sekula

#8. How does photography serve to legitimate and normalize existing power relationships? ... How is historical and social memory preserved, transformed, restricted and obliterated by photographs?

Allan Sekula