Allan Sekula Quotes & Sayings

Black-and-white photos tell the truth. That's why insurance companies use them. — Allan Sekula

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

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

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

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

The making of a human likeness on film is a political act. — Allan Sekula

Photography promises an enhanced mastery of nature, but photography also threatens conflagration and anarchy. — Allan Sekula

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