This short conversation took place in Allan Sekula’s Los Angeles Echo Park Studio on June 1, 2013. Allan and Hilde discuss an “object of interest” from his collection of artifacts named The Dockers’ Museum (2010-2013) [TDM], which he specifically wanted to show to Hilde.
This amateur painting was stored inside a metal filing cabinet in the front room, next to Allan’s working desk. Signed “H. Geller” and dated by its maker, it is now part of the collection of M HKA, Antwerp / Collection Flemish Community, as are all the other “objects of interest” from TDM. It bears the following identification:
CDFriedrich-esque 1945 Painting Depicting the Fire Bombing of Dresden, Painted about 8 Months after by a Doctor [H. Geller] Who Survived [title given by Allan Sekula]. Water color on paper, signed and dated 21 December 1945, 34,6 x 43,5 cm. Purchased by Allan Sekula through eBay on 9 June 2010.
Numbered “TDM 58,” its taxonomic status within The Dockers’ Museum is “(a) definite (strong evidence).”
TDM 58 is part of The Dockers’ Museum’s “Bombing Section. Curie-Einstein-Hiroshima-Nagasaki-Three Mile Island-Chernobyl-Fukushima Division.”
Note: In the conversation, Allan Sekula references a book of which he doesn’t recall the title. He meant W.G. Sebald’s On the Natural History of Destruction ([1999] 2003).