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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

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Allan Sekula
Age: 62 †
Born: 1951
Born: January 15
Died: 2013
Died: August 10
Art Theorist
Critic
Documentarian
Filmmaker
Photographer
Teacher
University Teacher
Visual Artist
Erie
Pennsylvania
Understanding
Mountains
Voyeurism
Social
Genre
Amassed
Littles
Envy
Contributed
Little
Terror
Spectacle
Much
Critical
Documentary
World
Mountain
Simultaneously
Photography
Documentaries
Evidence
Nostalgia
Excitation

More quotes by Allan Sekula

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How does photography serve to legitimate and normalize existing power relationships? ... How is historical and social memory preserved, transformed, restricted and obliterated by photographs?
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The only objective truth that photographs offer is the assertion that somebody or something... was somewhere and took a picture.
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The photograph is an incomplete utterance, a message that depends on some external matrix of conditions and presuppositions for its readability.
Allan Sekula
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Photography promises an enhanced mastery of nature, but photography also threatens conflagration and anarchy.
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The making of a human likeness on film is a political act.
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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.
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Black-and-white photos tell the truth. That's why insurance companies use them.
Allan Sekula