Globalisation Research Task.

Allan Sekula 'Fish Story' 

    I have decided to research into Allan Sekula and his project he entitled 'Fish Story', this originally was displayed as an exhibition using mixed media, such as projected slides, along side framed photographs to display his work. Sekula used this project to explore the geography of the advanced capitalistic world, the key issue in this project is the connection between containerised cargo movement and the constantly growing internationalisation of the world industrial economy, and its effect on the social space of ports themselves. As Sekula had this in mind before he went out to the ports to shoot he structured his work around this idea, he visited and photographed a wide range of ports and harbours in cities including Glasgow, London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Rotterdam, New York, Los Angeles, Veracruz and San Diego to name a few, he visited these places between 1988-1994. Sekula visited such a wide range of places in order to see how the globalisation was effecting each country individually and also how each country dealt with it differently. 
    Sekula wanted to show us the poverty that occurs in the major port cities across the world and also to see what remains of them in the new globalised economy, he documented the extremes of wealth and poverty that are reflected in the shipping industry as well as the charged role of politics. 
    When globalisation started to take happen it had a direct effect on small businesses such as fishermen etc as they were now less needed within society, the interesting thing about Sekula's 'Fish Story' is that he did not just photograph the ports and harbours he concentrated on the entire city in order to see how other people and businesses might have been affected. Allan Sekula wanted to create this body of work as it is something he feels passionate about, Sekula says that the indelible influence of romanticism has been to impart an idealised perception of harbours, ships and seafarers as suffused with adventure and nascent political rebellion. Where this perspective nowadays in todays society, homogenised by regional and global trade agreements seems to be outdated. Sekula, through his photographs is exposes a degree to which development of industry and trade globally is proceeding at different paces radically. 
    As I mentioned earlier Sekula originally displayed this work in an exhibition but has now been made into a book, containing about 900 colour images taken from around the worlds ports and at its heart is the impact of globalisation on the worlds economy.