Allan Sekula Appreciation is the Daily Pic by Blake Gopnik

Alan Sekula, the great artist-documentarian, died Saturday at the age of 62 – three days after the Daily Pic happened to have lingered on one of the images from his great “Fish Story” series, recently acquired by the Museum of Modern Art. I’d known he’d been sick with cancer for some time, but had no idea he was so near the end. So today’s Pic, another MoMA image from the same series, is in Sekula’s memory. It’s a 1992 photo titled “Pancake, a former shipyard sandblaster, scavenging copper from a waterfront scrapyard. Los Angeles harbor. Terminal Island, California.” Vimeo has a nice little video of him speaking a few years ago; its most Sekulian quotes come toward the end.

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