Abstract
In this essay I reread the photographer and critic Allan Sekula’s essays in terms of the critique of
the division of labor. In Japanese academic discourses on photography, there are only a few writings
dealing with his theoretical works, and they do not seem to fully address his Marxist way of thinking
in explaining his ideas. One of the two aims of this essay is to interpret his theory coherently, referring
to the books that affected his thought such as Valentin Voloshinov’s Marxism and the Philosophy
of Language or Harry Braverman’s Labor and Monopoly Capital. Another aim of this study is to
reconsider the concept realism by interpreting his theoretical writings. While advancing his theoretical
thinking on photography, Sekula defended “realism” in artistic creation from the late 1970s. In Europe
and the US, “realism” came under harsh attack from the mid-1970s when new photographic discourses
began to dominate. Largely influenced by post-structuralism, such discourses identified realism
with positivism and attempted to abandon the former’s critical possibility altogether. This kind of
thinking on photographic realism became hegemonic not only in Europe and the US but also in Japan
afterwards. However, in this country, the critical conception of realism has not been devised and the
anti-realist tendency of some photography theories has not yet been critically examined. Drawing on
the argument of the art critic John Roberts, who critically conceptualized realism and its relationship
to photography, this essay revisits the 1980’s anti-realist photography theories and differentiates
Sekula’s view from other contemporary theorists.
