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Source

Reading an Archive: Photography between Labour and Capital

Sekula, Allan Block, no. 10 (1986) 1986 Tier 2 Unverified Accessed 2026-04-29 View source ↗

Citation

Sekula, Allan. “Reading an Archive: Photography between Labour and Capital.” Block, no. 10 (1986): 4–7.

The essay also appears as a chapter in: Holland, Patricia, Jo Spence, and Simon Watney, eds. Photography/Politics: Two. London: Comedia/Methuen, 1986. Page range in that volume NOT verified in this round.

Relevance

Companion essay to Sekula’s “The Traffic in Photographs” (1981, src-sekula-1981). Extends the materialist critique of photographic archiving and institutional framing: Sekula argues that photographic archives are instruments of social control and classification, naturalising dominant social relations as documentary fact. The essay bears directly on The Family of Man as an institutional archive made exhibition — a curated selection that presents bourgeois-humanist ideology as universal truth.

Named in CREDIBILITY.md as part of “Allan Sekula’s essays on photographic meaning” at Tier 2. Specified in the issue #82 brief as “companion essay.”

Key excerpts / pages

  • Journal, issue, and page range (Block no. 10, pp. 4–7): carried from the citation as it appears in secondary literature and the issue #82 brief. Not independently verified against a fetched copy in this round.
  • No Internet Archive or open-access URL was located for Block no. 10 in this session. No fetch was attempted for Photography/Politics: Two (Comedia/Methuen 1986).
  • Verbatim passages not available in this round.

Notes

  • Access status (2026-04-29): No URL for this article located. Block was a British art-theory journal (1979–1989, Middlesex Polytechnic); print runs are held in specialist libraries. Marked verified: false because neither the journal text nor the anthology reprint was fetched or read in this session. The journal, issue number, and page range are carried from secondary citation, not from a primary fetch.
  • The essay is also reprinted in Sekula’s Photography Against the Grain (Halifax: NSCAD, 1984) — citation date inconsistency noted: if the book appeared in 1984, the Block appearance in 1986 would be a later reprint rather than the first publication. The ordering of first appearances is not resolved in this session; both sources are cited in secondary literature as authorities for this text. The year: 1986 in this entry follows the Block date given in the issue #82 brief.
  • Cross-reference to src-sekula-1981 (companion earlier essay). Cross-reference to src-sandeen-1995 (Sandeen’s study is the anchor for contextualising both Sekula essays within the Family of Man reception history).
  • Perspective: Marxist / materialist critique. Pairs with src-sekula-1981 as the two-essay foundation of the ideological-critique strand of FoM reception.
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