Allan Sekula
[Photographer, writer, and theorist, b. 1951, Erie, Pennsylvania, d. 2013, Los Angeles.]

 The only “objective” truth that photographs offer is the assertion that somebody or something... was somewhere and took a picture. Everything else, everything beyond the imprinting of a trace, is up for grabs. 
 ...the hidden imperatives of photographic culture drag us in two contradictory directions: “science” and a myth of “objective truth” on the one hand, and toward “art” and a cult of “subjective experience” on the other. This dualism haunts photography, lending a certain goofy inconsistency to the most commonplace assertions about the medium. 
 Photographic meaning is always a hybrid construction, the outcome of an interplay of iconic, graphic, and narrative conventions. 
 All photography that even approaches the status of high art contains the mystical possibility of genius. The representation drops away and only the valorized figure of the artist remains. 
 Black-and-white photos tell the truth. That’s why insurance companies use them. 
 Despite the powerful impression of reality (imparted by the mechanical registration of a moment of reflected light according to the rules of normal perspective), photographs, in themselves, are fragmentary and incomplete utterances. 
 Every photographic image is a sign, above all, of someone’s investment in the sending of a message. 
 Is it possible to discuss photography as a medium separate from the thing being photographed? 
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