Another reference from Sekula, this time a poet and performance artist whose work looks at oral traditions as well as questioning traditional narrative structures. In an interview, he speaks of how his talk performances differ from traditional poetry readings in the sense that they are improvised rather than learned and recited – as he said in an interview, reading a poem is like “returning to the scene of the crime/you try to reenact it and the more you try to bring it back to life the deader it becomes.” Continue reading “David Antin”
Category: Allan Sekula, photo works
Studs Terkel
Following up on the reference that Sekula made, I decided to research the work of Terkel. Although I could not find the entire works online, I managed to locate transcribed excerpts from Hard Times here, and some original recordings from all his publications here. This is work in the tradition of the Grimm brothers and Alan Lomax (whose recordings of delta blues artists are among my favourites), but Terkel gets his subjects (uncelebrated people) to relate their own stories in their own words. Continue reading “Studs Terkel”
Allan Sekula, photo works
“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.” (Sekula 1984, p 58) Continue reading “Allan Sekula, photo works”
Carl Whetham photography 