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 …

Baudrillard and Simulacrum

mickyates ContextualResearch, Critical Research Journal, Critical Theory, ICWeek9, Ideas, Informing Contexts, Media Theory, Philosophy, Photography, Politics 5 Comments

Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) wrote: ‘Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being, or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it. It is nevertheless the map that precedes the territory – precession of simulacra – that engenders the territory‘. (Baudrillard, 1981: 1). And …