1991 A Dialogue about Recent American and European
Photography; Museum of Contemporary Art; Los
Angeles, California
The Power of Words: An Aspect of Recent Documen-
tary Photography; PPOW Gallery; New York, New
York
Critical Realism; Perspektief; Rotterdam, The Nether-
lands
1992 Wasteland: Landscape from Now On; Fotografie Bien-
nale, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Proof: Los Angeles Art and Photograph 1960–1980;
Laguna Art Museum; Laguna Beach, California
1993 Trade Routes; New Museum of Contemporary Art;
New York, New York
1993 Biennal Exhibition; Whitney Museum of American
Art; New York, New York
1994 Proposition I; One-Five; Brussels, Belgium
1996 Face a`l’Histoire; Centre Pompidou; Paris, France
1997 InSite 97; Centro Cultural Tijuana; Tijuana, Mexico
1998 Voyage; Musee ́de Valence; Valence, France
La mer n’est pas la terre; Le Crie ́e; Rennes, France
Port and Corridor: Work Sites in Los Angeles: Robbert
Flick and Allan Sekula; Scratches on the Surface of
Things; Museum Boymans van Beuningen; Rotterdam,
The Netherlands
2000 Flight Patterns; Museum of Contemporary Art; Los
Angeles, California
Made in California; Los Angeles County Museum of
Art; Los Angeles, California
Charm Offensive; Korean Cultural Center; Los
Angeles, California
Desert and Transit; Kunsthalle zu Kiel; Kiel, Germany
Die Regierung/The Government; Alte Kestner Ges-
selschaft; Hannover, Germany
Rotterdam Foto Biennial; Museum Boymans van Beu-
ningen; Rotterdam, The Netherlands
2001 Antagonisms; MACBA; Barcelona, Spain
Trade; Fotomuseum Winterthur; Winterthur, Switzer-
land
Open City: Street Photography Since 1950; MoMA;
Oxford, EnglandSelected Works
Mining Photographs and Other Pictures 1948–1968: A Selec-
tion from the Negative Archives of Shedden Studio, Glace
Bay, Cape Breton, 1983
Photography Against the Grain: Essays and Photo-works
1973–1983, 1984
Geography Lesson: Canadian Notes, 1987
Fish Story, 1995
Dismal Science: Photo Works 1972–1996, 1999
Deep Six/Passer au bleu, 2001Further Reading
Buchloch, Benjamin. ‘‘Allan Sekula: Photography between
Discourse and Document.’’ InFish Story. Dusseldorf:
Richter Verlag, 1995.
Dufour, Gary. ‘‘Allan Sekula: gazetteer.’’ InGeography
Lesson: Canadian Notes. Vancouver and Cambridge:
Vancouver Art Gallery and MIT, 1997.
Edwards, Steven. ‘‘The Conditions of Photographic Cul-
ture.’’Art History, 9, no. 4 (December 1986).
Goldstein, Ann. ‘‘Dialogues and Accidence.’’ InA Dialogue
about Recent American and European Photography. Los
Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1991.
Smith, Terry. ‘‘Photography for and Against the Grain:
Leslie Shedden and Allan Sekula.’’Afterimage13, nos.
1–2 (Summer 1985).
Tuer, Dot. ‘‘Columbus Re-Sighted: An Analysis of Photo-
graphic Practices in a New World of Post-Modernism.’’
InThirteen Essays on Photography. Ottawa: Canadian
Museum of Contemporary Photography, 1991.SEMIOTICS
Semiotics, or semiology, is the systematic study of
signs and the processes of communication and sig-
nification as they occur in various sign systems.
The term ‘‘semiotics’’ is derived from the Greek
wordsemeıˆon,meaning sign. Although the nature
and function of signs intrigued thinkers from early
Greek thought onward, contributions to sign the-
ory before the work of Ferdinand de Saussure
(1857–1913) and Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–
1914) cannot be considered semiotics in today’s
sense of the term.
The modern pursuit of semiotics has evolved into
an interdisciplinary field of studies that focuses on
the origins, manifestations, and uses of signs by
individuals, and in discourses and cultures. Con-
cerned with the production and interpretation of
signs in all their forms and contexts, it aims at iden-
tifying the systematic regularities from which mean-
ing is construed. Semiotics is too heterogeneous in its
aims and goals as well as in its approaches and
procedures to be considered a unified discipline.
Instead, it is best understood as an interdisciplinarySEMIOTICS