“If TITANIC’s wake were a historical novel, Bill Gates, James Cameron, Frank Gehry, Herman Melville, Alexander Calder, Winslow Homer and Honoré de Balzac would all be characters. So would a host of lesser-known figures: the elderly Russian painter Luboff Khoudyakova, the young American anti-globalization activist Kaela Economou, the French metalworker Michel Boireau. This premise sounds both grandiose and impossible: I may be a writer, but I am not a novelist, and I have no particular appetite or aptitude for fictional characterization. But perhaps my confession to this novelistic fantasy can provide a key for viewers. Hopefully, TITANIC’s wake demonstrates that a simple visual diary of the last two years of the twentieth century can suggest the epic sweep and resonance of a historical novel, without in any way trying to be a historical novel, and without departing from the pictorial possibilities of careful documentary photography.” (Allan Sekula)

At the latest since his participation in “documenta 11”, the American photographer and essayist Allan Sekula has been considered one of the most important of the contemporary artists who take a critical view of the economic, political, social, and cultural changes being brought about by the globalisation of politics and the economy. His projects consistently centre around a key issue in contemporary photography: How can art critically address and present the abstract and complex relationships of the post-industrial economic processes? For Allan Sekula, the solution is to “reinvent documentarism in a way that diverges both from the traditions of social documentary and from artistic photography and conceptual thinking” (from a conversation with Benjamin H.D. Buchloh).
The cooperation between Camera Austria and Allan Sekula dates back to his participation in the symposium on
photography in 1987 “Photography Between Discourse and Document” and to the publication of the “Fish Story” project in the magazine the following year. In 2002, Allan Sekula was awarded the “Camera Austria Award
for Contemporary Photography by the City of Graz”.

Allan Sekula: TITANIC’s wake
With essays by the artist.
Edited by David Barriet, David Benassayag and Béatrice Didier, Le Point du Jour Éditeur, Paris 2003.