IAS Book Launch: Approaching the Sea - Allan Sekula’s Fish Story

by Simon Constantine, Steve Edwards, Jonathan Stafford, and Andrew Witt. Responses from Tamar Garb. Moderated by Stephanie Schwartz. First published in 1995, Allan Sekula’s Fish Story offers one of the most important and stunning critiques of the economic logic of global capital. The book, which was produced over seven years, and combines text and photographs into an ‘experimental essay’, tackles many of the myths driving globalization, including the immateriality of labour. The sea, Sekula demonstrates in photographs and words, not the ‘information superhighway’, still moves vast amounts of goods and people around the globe. Importantly, Fish Story provides its lessons in how to negotiate contemporary mythologies through an account of documentary’s history. Throughout it builds a cogent narrative about how and why the sea came to figure as one of documentary’s main protagonists. This symposium, which celebrates the launch of a new edition of Fish Story (MACK, 2018) seeks to address the book’s continued relevance. Find more information at: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/institute-of-advanced-studies/events/2018/oct/ias-book-launch-approaching-sea-allan-sekulas-fish-story