Reflections on the Pandemic

mickyates Documentary, Ethics, Mick's Photo Blog, Photography Leave a Comment

My photographic project on the pandemic and lockdown has also meant daily research and establishment of accurate medical facts, social statistics and news headlines. Today, I got a copy of Richard Horton’s book, The COVID-19 Catastrophe. Horton has been the editor of the globally influential Lancet peer-review medical journal since 1995. A man not without controversy, but also someone not afraid …

Allan Sekula – Fish Story, and Critical Realism

mickyates Art, ContextualResearch, Critical Research Journal, Critical Theory, Documentary, History, ICWeek12, Ideas, Informing Contexts, Landscape, Narrative, Photography 3 Comments

Allan Sekula was one of the most influential documentarians working in the late 20th Century. An incisive critic, he also was part of the re-imagining of documentary, moving photography (and art, generally) away from that rather ferocious and inward-looking absorption with identity that was postmodernism. His masterwork, Fish Story, reminds me of Susan Meiselas’ Kurdistan. Both used historical and contemporary …