The Global Photographies conference was attended by a good mix of scholars, photographers, artists, curators and students from Britain, Ireland, South Africa, Australia, the US, Turkey, the Netherlands, Canada, Finland, and more.
The first night we loaded into buses and went to the Mermaid Arts Center in Bray to see a screening of the photographer and writer Allan Sekula’s film “The Lottery of the Sea.” Here is how he describes it:
The Lottery of the Sea takes its title from Adam Smith, who in his famous Inquiry into the Wealth of Nations (1776) compared the life of the seafarer to gambling. Thus notions of risk were introduced by Smith through an allegory of the sea's dangers especially for those who did the hard work, and also for those who invested in ships and goods.
The film asks: is there a relationship between the most frightening and terrifying concept in economics, that of risk, and the category of the sublime in aesthetics?
It is an offbeat diary extending from the presumably "innocent" summer of 2001 through to the current "war on terror" by way of a meandering, essayistic voyage from seaport to seaport, waterfront to waterfront, and coast to coast.
What does it mean to be a maritime nation? To rule the waves? Or to harvest the sea?
An American submarine collides with a Japanese fisheries training ship. What does this suggest about the division of labor in the Pacific?
Panama decides whether to expand the width of its canal, over which it now exercises a certain qualified measure of sovereignty. How is it that a scuba diver would be most prepared to question this great flushing of the jungle watershed?
Galicia is presented with an unwanted gift of oil, with important questions following about the monomania of governments able only to conceptualize danger in one dimension.
Barcelona turns anew to its seafront, producing a pseudo-public sphere and new real estate value to the north and even greater maritime logistical efficiency to the south.
In between, we visit blizzards and demonstrations in New York, drifting prehistoric mastodons in Los Angeles, militant drummers and bemused African construction workers in Lisbon, millionaires or millionaire-impersonators in Amsterdam, and the stray dogs of Athens, all by way of thinking through seeing the sea, the market, and democracy.
—Allan Sekula, 2004
[Images from the film, lifted from the web. Oil collected from the
spill in Galicia, containers on a ship, slicing a fish for scientific
research, I think.]
Although there were some bits that I thought could be edited down, I enjoyed it very much. For me it built up over time so that by the last third or so I was mesmerized by the multiple interactions with seas and ports Sekula presents. Some large questions that emerged from these are: Who is able or allowed to benefit from marine resources? Who does the actual maritime work and with what tools? How do we find ourselves connected or divided by the sea? And of course, what is globalization doing to our world?
I learned about the practice of merchant ships flying a “flag of convenience,” which means the country where the ship is registered (such as Panama or Liberia), is not the one where the shipping company or cargo is from. The company registers wherever the fees and laws are most advantageous to the ship owner (including labor laws that govern how workers are treated and paid).
The sequence in the film that has remained most vividly in my mind is about the oil that coated the coast of Galicia, Spain, after the tanker Prestige sunk in 2002. The ship was Greek-operated, single-hulled oil tanker, officially registered in the Bahamas, but with a Liberian owner. (The flag of convenience system made it difficult to figure out who was responsible for the disaster.) The Spanish government mobilized volunteers to clean it up, all by hand. (Crazy that the government didn’t get equipment and professionals to do at least part of it.)
The scenes are extraordinary, like a depiction of the myth of Sisyphus rolling the boulder up a hill only to have it roll back down where he has to start the difficult task all over again. The oil clumps and slicks seem to have no end, rolling in with the waves, sticking to the rocks and the volunteers' white protective jumpsuits. I thought about Lebanon and the oil spill from the Israeli bombing of the Jiyyeh power plant last summer. But in Lebanon besides doing it by hand, pulling or shoveling up the carpet of oil from the seabed, they used suction equipment to clean rocks.
I also was struck by the film’s depiction of port workers moving the massive containers that are now the norm in transporting goods across the world. Instead of the old-time stevedores who loaded and unloaded cargo by hand or small machines, now they are mostly operators of those tall cranes that lift and move the containers. Though even with those it appeared there are workers who stay below in the ship and prepare the way. It all reminded me of the second season of the excellent TV show “The Wire” that was about port workers, labor struggles and smuggling at the port in Baltimore.
There was so much of interest in the stories the images told that I found it hard to concentrate on Sekula’s words, especially when he was more philosophical or abstract in his commentary. The film definitely inspired me to think more about the cargo ships and ports I love to watch whether I’m in Oakland, Baltimore, or Beirut.
[Oakland, CA port and city, from the port's official website.]
Sekula attended the conference and I saw him around often. I liked his serious and quiet demeanor and his hat (a fedora maybe). He also gave the last keynote talk, a very interesting description of trying out various modes of presenting an exhibit of his photographs at Documenta 12 in Kassel, Germany called "Shipwreck and workers (version 3)." At first he tried to find a way to install massive prints in a working factory, but eventually they were mounted on metal frames and set outdoors in Schlosspark Wilhelmshöhe underneath the Herkules statue alongside the monumental baroque water cascades.
