Julee Holcombe and Allan Sekula

Thanks for posting that article Ali! As promised, here are some of the art historical references to which Julee Holcombe's works are responding. I focused on the architectural ones because those seemed to be the ones you all were interested in.:

Julee Holcombe, Architect's Dream Thomas Cole, Architect's Dream, 1840


Julee Holcombe, Babel Revisited Pieter Brueghel the Elder, The Tower ofBabel, 1563

Julee Holcombe actually had two Babel pictures on the Conner Contemporary site, and Brueghel also did multiple versions of the Tower of Babel as well.

I also promised I'd post some stuff on Allan Sekula as an artist who is interested in a lot of the same questions as Burtynsky about contemporary space and the forgotten landscape. The series that I know most about is called Fish Story, which documents a key aspect of our contemporary space--the oceans. One website said this about Fish Story: "A key issue in Fish Story is the connection between containerized cargo movement and the growing internationalization of the world industrial economy, with its effects on the actual social space of ports." (http://www.wdw.nl/project.php?id=95). Sekula puts into central focus the importance of this kind of movement through the water to our economy. Like Burtynsky, Sekula calls attention to an aspect of society whose existence we do not even consider, while still feeling the benefits of it in our daily lives. And also like Burtynsky, Sekula's photographs can be compellingly beautiful:



Anyway, sorry for such a long post, and great discussion and ideas on Tuesday, I feel like we are really moving along now!