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Between 1973 and 1976 a few students like Fred Lonidier, Phel Steinmetz, Martha Rosler and Allan Sekula got together at the University of California in San Diego and shared photography practice and artistic thoughts and developed a critical practice linked to the artistic, political, social and economical topics of their time. The UCSD welcomed European thinkers who brought a critical mind and left-wing thoughts among most students as well as among the four photographers who were personally standing up for many causes. They were interested in the early 1970s' American society and especially in its capitalist facets. Using various points of view, the young photographers showed and criticized the social, political and artistic consequences of those capitalist ideas, which were also affecting other fields than politics. These four photographers have triggered a real reflexion and offered a personal, new and engaged perspective on a capitalist society and its effects. Indeed, with its productions (texts, photographs, and performances) the San Diego School is a perfect illustration of that counter culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay proposes a possible conceptual framework for the understanding of Allan Sekula's last and unfinished project Ship of Fools / The Dockers' Museum (2010-2013). It explores how the vast collection of vintage objects Sekula assembled for The Dockers' Museum allows to build imaginative sequential geographies of historical maritime struggle. It presents a reading of six images, selected from the corpus of The Dockers' Museum and considers each image as a micro-historical narrative related to Sekula's interest in mutiny as a form of resistance. The analysis is informed by a close study of Allan Sekula's earlier project Fish Story (1989-1995) and essays, (unpublished) lectures, interviews and personal notebooks related to Fish Story. Taken together the images retrace a residual poetics of lost collectivities and outbursts of social conflict and connect instances of human agency that metonymically evoke the intersubjective dimension of work and struggle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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