Documentary is thought to be art when it transcends its reference to the world, when the work can be regarded, first and foremost, as an act of self-…

- Allan Sekula

Documentary photography has amassed mountains of evidence. And yet... the genre has simultaneously contributed much to spectacle, to retinal excitati…

- Allan Sekula

How does photography serve to legitimate and normalize existing power relationships? ... How is historical and social memory preserved, transformed, …

- Allan Sekula

Black-and-white photos tell the truth. That's why insurance companies use them.

- Allan Sekula

Photography promises an enhanced mastery of nature, but photography also threatens conflagration and anarchy.

- Allan Sekula

The making of a human likeness on film is a political act.

- Allan Sekula

The only objective truth that photographs offer is the assertion that somebody or something... was somewhere and took a picture.

- Allan Sekula

The photograph is an incomplete utterance, a message that depends on some external matrix of conditions and presuppositions for its readability.

- Allan Sekula