Family matters - Allan Sekula's 'Dismal Science: Photo Works 1972-1996'

Afterimage, Jan-Feb, 1999 by Marya Roland

Dismal Science: Photo Works 1972-1996 by Allan Sekula Atlanta College of Art Atlanta, Georgia October 9-November 29, 1998

Dismal Science: Photo Works 1972-1996 by Allan Sekula New York, NY: D.A.P., forthcoming

"Dismal Science: Photo Works 1972-1996 by Allan Sekula" is a 25-year survey of work remarkable for its visual power and conceptual density that joins documentary photography and critical writing. For those who persevere through the opaque veneer of this work, the whelm, stimulate and certainly reward. The title is an apt signpost for the entire exhibit and a succinct insight into the artist's use of words. While "Dismal Science" also operates as a metaphor for the "science" of photography itself, Sekula most certainly intended the allusion to the nineteenth-century historian, Thomas Carlyle, who coined "dismal science" in reference to political economics. The exhibit is indeed a record of the economic politics of the aerospace, shipyard and military industries in the United States and the U.K.

One of the earliest works in the show, "Aerospace Folktales" (1973), is not only the exhibit's conceptual keystone but its most compelling piece. Essentially an installation, it is composed of black and white photographs, three red chairs set in front of three sound systems and several potted palms. The 51 photographs, mounted in 23 black frames, are hung across one long wall and two side walls in a numbered narrative sequence. Sekula's extensive use of text at this early date is characteristic of the writing accompanying or incorporated into all his later work. Commentary in white type on a black background such as "1 photograph the family standing around" is typed, photographed, printed in reverse values and mounted within the same frame as a photograph of a man, a woman and a young girl standing in front of a wall of garage doors in an apartment complex. As the girl tosses a ball in the air, the man looks at his watch, and the woman appears to be adjusting hers. in another frame, a list of tenant policies is paired with the bleak exterior of an apartment complex. In each case, the photograph of the text is the same size as its complementary narrative photograph.

"Aerospace Folktales," like most of Sekula's work, unfolds gradually. As three recorded voices speak simultaneously and continuously in the background, the written and visual narratives depict a white-collar Catholic family living in an apartment complex in Los Angeles. Near the end of the series two crucial bits of information are obliquely divulged: the father is an unemployed aerospace engineer and his name is Ignace Sekula. Now the identities and personalities of the taped voices begin to register. They are the voices of Sekula's mother, father and Allan Sekula himself. His mother speaks in a personal anecdotal manner, describing family life and concerns at the time the photographs were taken. Sekula's father is the political analyst as he lectures about pertinent economic and political issues. The voice of the teacher is the artist himself, whose words significantly add to the viewer's understanding of "Aerospace Folktales." The voices in "AerosPace Folktales," the personal, the analytical and didactic, may be considered the three facets of Sekula's later artistic expression.

In "Sketch for a Geography Lesson" (1983), for example, those "voices" demonstrate how religion, war and daily life intermingle in Western culture. Sekula describes an illustration remembered from childhood - a drawing that depicts the Virgin Mary defending a village against the Red Army - which his sister later sent to him when he mentioned it. Six-color photographs show various everyday activities and images, among them an image of two women walking, a slaughterhouse in the snow and a Christian gravestone. Ironically and intentionally, the gravestone and slaughterhouse are mounted opposite one another. Two black and white photographs that flank the text and the color photographs depict tanks and military images shot from a television monitor, a reminder of the ubiquity of both television and war images. The text's didactic voice cites data relating to the U.S.'s military presence in Northern Bavaria.

Sekula's photography and writing are so complementary that each adds to the information revealed in the other. The nine large cibachrome prints in "War without Bodies" (1991), possibly the most conceptually accessible photographs in the exhibit, convey the essence of Sekula's ideas (as expressed in the related writing) through visual metaphor and specific anecdotal images. In three of them, Sekula shows an infant being dwarfed by a monstrous black aircraft machine gun as he is held up and encouraged to admire and fondle this symbol of male power. In other photographs, young men touch the gun in poses reminiscent of Michelangelo's image of God giving life to Adam. It seems apparent here who gives "life" to these instruments of destruction. At the same time, the sensuousness of the gun's dark form cutting into luscious blue sky conveys an intense, uneasy visual interest.