Allan Sekula en Galicia: dos series fotográficas sobre trabajo, capitalismo y crisis

Allan Sekula, uno de los principales referentes de la fotografía documental, realizó dos series en Galicia: Mensaxe nunha botella (1992) y Black Tide/Marea negra (2002-2003), resultado de dos encargos, el primero de la Fotobienal de Vigo y el segundo del periódico La Vanguardia. El fotógrafo centró su atención en trabajos y personas relacionados con el mar, desde estibadores hasta voluntarios y marineros involucrados en la limpieza de la costa tras el accidente del petrolero Prestige. Esta investigación se propone analizar las series, explicar las circunstancias de su realización y responder a la pregunta de hasta qué punto, tratándose de encargos, el fotógrafo se mantuvo fiel a su programa para la “nueva fotografía documental”, establecido en los primeros años de su trayectoria.

Is Compassion an Oceanic Feeling?

The emotional connections that humans feel with other humans seem quite distinct from the ‘oceanic feeling’ that confronts us when solitary mortals face the great waters. Uniting these discourses requires drawing together the myriad resources of sea poetry, canonical novels, and multiple theoretical traditions from Freudian psychoanalysis to the ‘blue’ (or oceanic) humanities and contemporary environmental studies. Shifting from narrowly human to post-human ways of understanding our human and nonhuman surroundings enables the novels of Austen and Cervantes to speak to the theoretical perspectives of Luce Irigaray, Sigmund Freud and John Dewey, as well as contemporary figures such as Allan Sekula, Karin Animoto Ingersoll and Christopher Connery. Principles of connection and ‘experience’ unearth new ways of imagining the relationships among humans and between humans and the nonhuman environment that seem particularly valuable in our own moment of ecological crisis and catastrophe.

The Forensic Eye and the Public Mind: The Bertillon System of Crime Scene Photography

In fin de siècle France, Alphonse Bertillon—best known for his widely adopted system of criminal identification—pursued “other applications” for judicial photography, suggesting that photography might be used to procure “an exact, complete, and impartial” view of “locales, things, and beings.” Photography, Bertillon was suggesting, could preserve a crime scene. In many ways, crime scene photography seems like the logical fulfillment of what Allan Sekula termed the “evidentiary promise” of photography. Understanding crime scene photography as a form of evidence places it in the realm of empirical science, with the photograph preserving proof of misdeeds and aiding the detective's forensic pursuit of truth. But, perhaps surprisingly, this was not the use that Bertillon foresaw for crime scene photography. Instead he suggested that crime scene photography was destined for the courtroom, and for the eyes of the jury. There it would not be a vehicle of objective proof, but rather an emotional catalyst for conviction. This paper examines the Bertillon system of crime scene photography as a rhetorical strategy calibrated for emotional impact, showing how it attempted to move viewers from the space of investigation and uncertainty to the space of conviction.