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Interpretations of the Politics of Fictive Landscapes in Context A Comparison of Allan Sekula’s Sketch on a Geography Lesson and

Martha Rosler’s In the Place of the Public Airport Series

Introduction to a Master’s Thesis’ Submitted

to the Temple University Graduate Board

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Art

By Alison J. Leedy

May, 2012

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Introduction: Fiction and Factography: Re-evaluating Social-Documentary Photography Through the Photographic Series of Allan Sekula and Martha Rosler

Since the birth of photography in the 19th century, photographic discourse has focused on

the fact-recording abilities of the camera to accurately convey details of the surrounding world

through images. The early 20th century philosopher and social theorist Walter Benjamin wrote

his monumental essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1936), in

which he discussed the effects of industrialism on human creativity and focused heavily on the

birth of the camera and its inclusion within the fine arts field. Benjamin questions, “The

camera… on the one hand extends our comprehension of the necessities that rule our lives; on

the other, it manages to assure us of an immense and unexpected field of action.”1 For Benjamin,

the emergence of photography in the modern world points out, through images, details often

overlooked in everyday life, while simultaneously exposing the possibilities of new horizons—

both intellectual and physical—which have never been imagined. In the context of social-

documentary photography the “immense and unexpected field of action” that he describes can

open the eyes of the viewer both to the injustice(s) and the many progressive opportunities that

the post-industrial world creates.

As photography developed during the post-World War II period, social documentary

photographers such as Alan Sekula and Martha Rosler expand on the “immense and unexpected

field of action” that Benjamin credits the camera with opening up to the viewer. Working

throughout the 1980s when postmodern theories upheld notions of photography as merely

another component of simulacra, or the intentional creation of an image without meaning or

origin, Rosler and Sekula critique capitalism, document images of the under-privileged or

                                                                                                               1 Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in Illuminations: Essays

and Reflections, ed. Hannah Ardent, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Random House, 1988), 219.

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overlooked, and present lower class factory workers within the context of their everyday lives.

Questions surrounding the increase in consumerism in the post-world war II era and the distance

of the worker from the final product of his or her labor with new changes in the assembly line

model era are significant to Sekula’s and Rosler’s conceptual framework. In order to show the

differing effects of pre-war and post-war industrialism, they operate under a distinct aesthetic

approach derived from earlier 20th century social documentary photographers such as Lewis W.

Hine and Jacob Riis, who began the practice in America, while still maintaining a connection to

the roots of socio-political documentary photography. By creating series that focus on the lives

of the lower social classes, such as factory employees leaving work at the end of the day in

Sekula’s series of twenty-five images in Untitled Slide Sequence, 1972 (fig. 1)2 or broken bottles

left by homeless alcoholics in Rosler’s The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems,

1974-75 (fig. 2), they urge the viewer to examine the socio-political context of the images rather

than abstract concepts or a fictitious place.

Through a visual analysis comparing Sekula’s and Rosler’s images with examples from

Hine and Riis, I demonstrate how Sekula’s and Rosler’s work maintains this theme into the post-

world war II period. Sekula’s and Rosler’s work share subject matter with Hine’s and Riis’s

series documenting the homeless, immigrants, and lower class factory workers, and by doing so

they sustain an interest in using documentary photography to promote social change. However, it

is the degree of change or the manner it occurs that differentiates Sekula’s and Rosler’s

photographs from those working in social documentary photography in the early 20th century

shortly after the industrial revolution. The differences between pre-world war I and post-world

war II documentary photography are discussed through images of workers and lower class

neighborhoods to consider how the role of the worker and work models changed during these                                                                                                                

2 Descriptive titles are given to each individual image to clarify for the reader

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two periods. Based on the manner in which Sekula’s and Rosler’s work departs from the

aesthetics of the early 20th century, one can see how their compositions focus on a distanced

perspective from the subjects in the arrangement of their socio-political documentary series. This

is quite different from earlier intimate portraits of the worker by Hine and Riis. Highlighting how

Sekula and Rosler fit into a trajectory of social documentary photography sets up a framework to

discuss the significance of their allusions to real-life socio-political issues in their early post-

world war II and postmodern work.

One way to fight social injustice is through fine art that associates photographic images to

real life. Photography is unique to the fine arts particularly because it has the ability to capture

acute details without the buffer of the artist’s hand. The ability to capture one specific moment

frozen in time also differentiates photography from other mediums in that video and film focus

on recording sequences of extended moments. As we are now in the postmodern or post-

postmodern age and it is over a century after the birth of photography and Benjamin’s

observations, there are new concerns regarding the mechanization of art that are particularly

relevant to the genre of documentary photography. In looking at the images from both the pre-

war and post-war periods I aim to draw out the de-emphasis on recording an actual physical

place in documentary photography—one that has occurred in photography from the second half

of the twentieth century. This particular trend is attributed to the paradigm shift to

postmodernism and the interest in art as simulacra. I propose that there is contemporary

photographic art that engages in the socio-political sentiments of earlier photographic pioneers

such as Riis and Hine: Rosler and Sekula are examples, as are Andreas Gursky and Edward

Burtynsky, who consider aesthetics from a socio-political perspective. Gursky and Burtynsky are

both post-world war II photographers, but they differ from the postmodern agenda in that they

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adjust their aesthetic approach to the current place and time by capturing people and settings that

maintain a recognizable link to real life. Comparing artists from the early 20th century, the post-

world war II period, and today aids in revealing the importance of political dialogue created

through images that emphasize the reality of the context(s) and the changes that have been made

in approaching this field in the post-war era. Rosler’s and Sekula’s style and composition,

aesthetically and conceptually, act as models for how to engage socio-political issues in

documentary photography, and I argue for its relevance within contemporary photographic

discourse.

The 1980s are considered a period in contemporary art history when the political fervor

of the 1960s and early 1970s diminished greatly. Departing from this trend, Rosler’s and

Sekula’s documentary work continues to address political ideas throughout the 1980s, creating a

bridge t today’s photographers like Burtynsky and Gursky. Throughout my thesis I investigate

the manner in which Rosler and Sekula question the legitimacy of documentary photography

within the postmodern age and focus on how art embedded in socio-political critique is still

relevant today. Through visually analyzing and comparing the geopolitical context of the

photographs featured in Rosler’s In the Place of the Public Airport Series, 1983 (fig. 3) and

Sekula’s Sketch on a Geography Lesson, 1982 (fig. 4). I examine each photographer’s work from

the burgeoning stages of postmodern theory and draw a association between the early stages of

documentary photograph to the contemporary. It is Sekula’s and Rosler’s work that serves as the

bridge between the two.

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Illustrations

   Figure 1. Untitled Slide Sequence, Allan Sekula, (1972), silver-gelatin print, “Walk don’t run close up shot.

 

  Figure 2. The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems, Martha Rosler, (1974-1975), silver gelatin print, “Get a Full 5 %.

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                                                                       Figure 3. Martha Rosler, In the Place of the Public Airport Series, “Map image,”(1983-1984), silver gelatin print.

 

                                   

Figure 4. Allan Sekula, Sketch on a Geography Lesson, “Forbidden Sign,” (1982-1983), silver gelatin print.