Allan Sekula

(1951–2013)

Allan Sekula’s body of work stages Marxist critiques of globalization, economic imperialism, and the US military. Best known as a photographer, Sekula also worked as a writer, filmmaker, and theorist, and began his career in the early 1970s staging anti-war performances. His 2009 exhibition, Polonia and Other Fables, at the Renaissance Society, documented the Polish diaspora in Chicago and its histories of migration, nationalism, and labor. During a visit to Chicago made in preparation for the exhibition, Sekula documented the historic six-day strike and sit-in by the workers of Republic Windows and Doors Factory on Goose Island in 2008.