Photography and the Limits of National Identity

Allan Sekula

Susan Meiselas. Arbil, Northern Iraq, Kurdistan, December 1991. “Dr. Clyde Snow, internationally known forensic anthropologist, holds the blindfolded skull of an executed male teenager estimated to be between fifteen and eighteen years old. The skull was found with two bullet holes in the head.” From the series Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History. Courtesy Susan Meiselas, Magnum Photos.

Grey Room 55
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Citation

Allan Sekula, “Photography and the Limits of National Identity,” Grey Room 55 (Spring 2014): 28-33. (doi:10.1162/GREYa00143)

Filed under art, politics

Abstract

Beginning with critical reflections on nationalism and photography, Sekula examines Susan Meiselas’s archival photographic project Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History (1991–97). Coining the term “counter-forensics” to describe Meiselas’s use of photography, alongside the work of forensic anthropologists such as Clyde Snow, to reconstruct individual identities after genocide, Sekula presents a novel account of documentary practices, photographic archives, national and ethnic identity, and human rights activism, which he contrasts with collections of found images in contemporary art such as Gerhard Richter’s Atlas (1962–ongoing).