How does Allan Sekula’s engagement with the sea, help us to think about trade in the 16th century? Link images or articles that you see relevant to this question or your reflections.

Allan Sekula’s Forgotten Space is a reflective critic of the world’s current trade and the unseen voyages, parcels, goods all boxed in steel. Despite the dreary modern visage of trade alluded the video, Sekula highlights an important point, that this business binds as together and its kind of ironic, the stranger “other” is a stranger being yet still my benefactor when goods are turned in.

Arrival of a Portuguese ship kind of reflects that tension, the people are all solely connected by the imports, and the scenery suggest only great interest centred around the goods, and not so on human interactions. Other namban screens, also depict the locals, curious but wary.

Which… links to the steel and desolation which Sekula mentions of order, efficiency and global progress, only leading to disorder and destruction? The wiki page of firearms in Japan, suggest the Portuguese were the first to bring gunpowder in the early 16th century.

However, at least trade was more interactive then, compared to the now global sterile approach(ebay, amazon comes to mind).

I wonder if ever in the future, will we regret the effects of capitalism, even though currently, it incurs positive benefits for the majority.