culture
Sekulas’ visual essay on the sea at Tàpies
Fishermen, sailors and dockworkers populate the world of photographer Allan Sekula (1951-2013), who in his latter years travelled the world with his camera to record the effects of globalisation on the maritime economy and the environment. What Sekula produced was a kind of visual essay on the consequences of unbridled neoliberalism.
The US photographer had links with Barcelona, as it was one of the places in his project on the sea, along with the Galician coast, Rotterdam, Los Angeles, Bilbao, Calais, Santos and Tokyo. And Barcelona is now hosting the first monographic exhibition of the photographer’s maritime work in Spain, in the Fundació Tàpies until September 25.
The director of the foundation, Carles Guerra, defines Sekula’s work as “a major account of the effects of globalisation on the maritime economy and the progressive disappearance of ways of working related to the sea.”