Allan Sekula

Sekula, Polish metalhead. “Taste of Polonia” Festival, Chicago, September 2007.

What Allan Sekula (b. 1951) wants viewers to see in his photographs is often invisible—identifiable only from captions, like the tree-covered CIA black site seen from across the lake just before the wrong film was confiscated, Kiejkuty, Poland, July 2009.

Text plays a crucial role in “Polonia and Other Fables” as Sekula, an American photographer who teaches at CalArts, combines 40 photos (most taken during the past three years) with a stream-of-consciousness essay and wall-mounted quotations from sources such as Alan Greenspan and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Many of the photos highlight the affinities between Chicago—which has the largest Polish population outside Poland—and Poland itself. (“Polonia” refers to Poles not living in Poland.) Sekula pairs a photo of saxophonist Ornette Coleman performing in Chicago with a vertical triptych of two people chatting at Warsaw’s Tygmont Jazz Club. Other images suggest it’s hard to maintain a Polish identity in Chicago, however, unless wearing a KISS ME, I’M POLISH T-shirt counts.

Polishness really serves as the lens through which Sekula examines universal concerns about money, family and social justice. His quotations, as well as photos of American-owned Polish pig farms and last year’s factory strike at Chicago’s Republic Windows and Doors, reflect his interests in globalization, labor movements, immigration and the fallout from Chicago School economists’ free-market cheerleading.

Exhibition curator Hamza Walker writes that Sekula doesn’t “spectacularize his subject.” In practice, this means some of his photos come off as dull or awkwardly composed. (A third of the Republic-strike photo is taken up by a man’s blurry midriff.) But by refusing to pigeonhole his project as documentary or conceptual photography, Sekula creates a hybrid as fascinating as Polonia itself.

• More Art & Design reviews
• More Art & Design articles