Allan Sekula- Reading Archive: Photography Between Labour and Capital

History of photo 1: Allan Sekula- Reading archive: photography between labour and capital
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Alan Sekula in Reading archive seeks to show the relationship between photographic culture and economic life. Sekula (1999) begins by mentioning a photographic archive of a mining town in Cape Breton spanning 20 years for the years 1948-1968. Even though, the photographs in the era mainly showed the economic realities of the time, there was more to the photographic culture. Photographers may construct their own world, and the main photographer at the time also understood the value of photography in self- promotion (Sekuta, 1999). People in a different period likely attach different meanings to archived photographs, but these archives are necessary to show the realities of different places at a different time.
Photographic representation is necessary to preserve the historical and social memory, but which can also be transformed. As people pass and deal in photographs the original meaning may be transformed, where the cultural, financial and consumption aspects interact to influence the trade in photographs. However, the economy that allows people to trade in photographs and works of art also eliminate the images’ background, through the creation of new images. Photographic archives still retain a prominent role since photographic statements are made through inspiration of earlier photographic images. No one has the monopoly of deciding the historicity of images, but the participants who allow the trade in photography may set the agenda and influence meaning attached to them.
The power of archives cannot be ignored when looking at photography, but the people managing the archive system also have their agendas. Typically, the bourgeois holds power and establish global archives that seek to prom...