Allan Sekula papers, circa 1800-2020, bulk 1960-2013

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Summary

Creators:
Sekula, Allan
Abstract:
Allan Sekula was one of the foremost artists of his generation, as well as a public intellectual, art critic, theorist, and educator, whose work was informed by his social commentary, criticism, and activism. An exemplar of the socially committed intellectual, Sekula built critical foundations for theorizing the relationship between word and image, reconceptualized documentary photography practices, and was one of the first artists to cast a critical eye on globalization as a social phenomenon. In his multi-disciplinary artistic practice of "critical realism," Sekula used photography, text, installation, and film to address intersecting themes of labor, power, globalization, and the sea. Sekula's papers document his practices in all the arenas he engaged in and also document his wide circle of artistic and critical interlocutors. Charting his career from his student days through his final projects, Sekula's papers are a meticulously kept and comprehensive archive of his activities and output.
Extent:
640 Linear Feet (869 boxes, 20 flatfile folders, 4 film reels, 1 boxed-roll)
Language:
Collection material is in English.
Preferred citation:

Allan Sekula papers, circa 1800-2020 (bulk 1960-2013), The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Accession no. 2016.M.22.

http://hdl.handle.net/10020/archives2016m22

Background

Scope and content:

The Allan Sekula papers are a comprehensive archive of Sekula's intellectual output over his forty-year career as an artist, educator, and writer from his student days through his final projects. On a broader level, they chart the transformation of photography as medium and art form from the postwar era into the second decade of the twenty-first century. The archive includes a wide array of materials from correspondence, course and research material, and writings to photographs, and audiovisual material.

Arranged in 12 series, the papers chart Sekula's career from his student days through his final projects. They are a meticulously kept archive of his activities and output that records his praxis in the wide-ranging arenas he explored including the intersecting themes of labor, power, globalization, and the sea—in short, the global capitalist industrial complex— while also documenting the wide circle of artistic and critical interlocutors with whom he engaged.

Sekula's rich visual sense is evident in the 142 notebooks comprising Series I Notebooks. Dating from his time as a student in the 1970s to 2012, the notebooks chronicle Sekula's life and development as an artist and theorist and demonstrate his artistic process from the initial formulation of projects to sketched shot frames for his films.

Series II comprises Sekula's vast archive of slides, negatives, color film, and contact prints. The series features preliminary materials that Sekula generated for each of his projects as well as documentation of his projects. Some binders are devoted to photographs of Sekula's wife, Sally Stein, and other family members.

Series III Photographic prints comprises prints for most of Sekula's photographic projects beginning with his student work in the early 1970s and continuing through Polonia and Other Fables (2007-2010), and Ship of Fools (1999-2011).

Series IV Exhibitions and film screenings contains correspondence, installation notes, shipping receipts, ephemera, text panels, posters, and photographs chronicling Sekula's exhibition history from his 1970 installation at UCSD to the 2013 exhibition, L'oeil photographique. The series documents each of Sekula's solo exhibitions as well as his participation in group shows. Sekula's participation in group shows was as extensive as that of his solo exhibitions. The materials for these exhibitions primarily comprise ephemera and reviews, with some exceptions that include more comprehensive files containing catalogs, press packets, and correspondence. Files on proposed and unrealized exhibitions are also included in the series, as are materials relating to Sekula's film screenings.

Series V Correspondence is arranged in two groups: personal correspondence and institutional correspondence. Personal correspondence encompasses letters from individuals including colleagues and family. Institutional correspondence provides a window into Sekula's hectic professional life as he juggled installations, artist-in-residencies, and speaking engagements while teaching at CalArts.

Series VI Writings comprises Sekula's extensive written work from his undergraduate and graduate work through his last pieces. The series documents the various stages of Sekula's writings from early drafts to their final iterations in print. Also included in the series are unpublished manuscripts and lectures, transcripts of published and unpublished interviews, and writings on Sekula.

Series VII Research files includes photocopies and offprints, notes, maps from Sekula's travels, newspaper clippings, audiovisual material, and a small number of early twentieth-century monographs and photographs that served as source materials for Sekula's projects and writings. Included are several of his micro-collections that reflect his enduring interest in maritime themes. Full issues of newspapers, predominantly date from the 1990s and cover the Bush era and the Gulf War. Also present here are writings by critics, theorists, and photographers.

Series VIII Teaching, lectures, and fellowships include materials related to Sekula's teaching career, his speaking and lecture engagements, and administrative papers, essays, and applications relating to grants and fellowships.

Series IX Personal files, contains addresses, business cards, planners, conference badges, school IDs, printouts of Sekula's book collection lists, photographs, artworks Sekula produced as a teenager, school awards, yearbooks, and other miscellaneous items relating to Sekula's personal life.

Series X Collections encompasses a diverse array of objects, toys, illustrated journals, tear sheets, comics, posters, and photographs collected by Sekula throughout his life.

Series XI Ephemera contains exhibition invitations and ephemera collected by Sekula, including press releases, exhibition catalogs, gallery cards, pledge/donation cards, RSVP cards, annual programming packets, greeting cards, occasionally with personal dedications to Sekula, and newsletters. Also included are exhibition invitations and announcements from museums, foundations, galleries, and other arts-related institutions.

Series XII Allan Sekula Studio and legacy contains posthumous publications, exhibition materials, and writings about Sekula after his death in 2013.

Biographical / historical:

Allan Sekula (January 15, 1951-August 10, 2013), was an American artist, photographer, writer, and educator. Widely recognized as a public intellectual, art critic, and theorist, Sekula's work was informed by his social commentary, criticism, and activism. He was among the most important critical thinkers working in photography in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In his multi-disciplinary artistic practice of "critical realism," he used photography, text, installation, and film to address intersecting themes of labor, power, globalization, and the sea. Over four decades he continually advanced "his shared commitment to combining writing and photography in a forceful social critique" (Stein on Sekula, vii). Sekula lived and taught predominantly in Southern California while his projects and exhibitions frequently took him throughout the world.

The eldest of five children, Sekula was born in Erie, Pennsylvania, to Evelyn Shepard Sekula, a homemaker, and Ignace Sekula, a chemical engineer who worked most of his life in the aerospace industry and the United States Air Force. In 1959, the Sekulas moved to San Pedro, California, an ethnically diverse maritime community of Los Angeles. Growing up near the Port of Los Angeles, one of the the largest ports in the United States, impacted Sekula and his work profoundly, as did his father's engineering career in aerospace and the military. After graduating from San Pedro High School, Sekula attended University of California, San Diego (UCSD), intending to study marine biology, before changing his major to visual arts. After receiving his BFA, he enrolled in school's MFA program, graduating in 1974. While at UCSD he studied with conceptual artists John Baldessari and David Antin, and formed a group with Fred Londinier, Martha Rosler, and Phel Steinmetz, who were also socially-committed artists working in photography. In 1981, Sekula married art historian and professor Sally Stein.

From 1974 to 2013, Sekula's work was featured in over one hundred solo and group exhibitions worldwide. In his early works, he had already incorporated the multimedia and documentary elements that he continued to utilize and experiment with for the rest of his career. In works such as Aerospace Folktales (1973), he combined sequences of photographs with words (written and/or spoken) "in ways that sought to incorporate and to invite a political dialogue" (Sekula, xi-xii). Later works, such as Fish Story (1989-1995), were large, site-specific, almost cinematic installations that were exhibited in several venues worldwide. Other projects, such as The Forgotten Space (2010), co-directed with Noël Birch, were stand-alone documentary films. Sekula's final work, Ship of Fools / The Dockers' Museum (2010-2013), which other artists and scholars have continued since his death through additional installations, a symposium, and a publication, comprises two projects: large photographs and slide shows by Sekula of docks and their activities, juxtaposed with selections from his ever-increasing collection of small objects and ephemera related to dockworkers' experiences. Many of Sekula's works overlapped in theme and built on one another, as part of his "life-long search for imagining possible forms of solidarity in a globalized economy" (Streitberger, 11).

Sekula was a prolific writer. He began his career writing essays in which he critically analyzed the history of photography and its social uses. Pieces such as "On the Invention of Photographic Meaning" (Artforum, 1975), "The Body and the Archive" (October, 1986), and other articles are seminal critical theory texts that today remain frequently cited and assigned texts in art history, art practice, and other academic fields. Sekula's first book, Photography Against the Grain: Essays and Photo Works, 1973-1983 (1984), is a collection of many of his early writings and artworks. Published posthumously, his last book, Art isn't Fair: Further Essays on the Traffic in Photographs and Related Media (2020), which gathered additional writings and works from throughout his career, was edited by Sally Stein and Sekula Studio manager, Ina Steiner.

Integral to his career as an artist and writer, Sekula taught for over thirty-five years, beginning his career as a lecturer in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) in 1976. From 1980 to 1981, he taught in the Cinema Studies department at New York University (NYU) before going to Ohio State University in 1981 where he taught in the university's now-defunct Department of Photography and Cinema. In 1985, he began teaching in the Department of Photography and Media of the School of Art at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), where he taught for the next 28 years. At CalArts, Sekula worked closely with fellow teacher and artist Michael Asher.

Sekula received numerous honors over the course of his career, including both Artist and Critic awards from the National Endowment for the Arts (1977, 1978, 1980); a Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship (1986); Getty Scholar Grant (1996-1997); Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (1997); and the College Art Association's Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing on Art (2012). His work has generated several posthumous exhibitions, publications, and international conferences.

Sources consulted:

Brietwieser, Sabine, ed. Allan Sekula: Performance Under Working Conditions. Vienna: Generali Foundation, 2003.

Dawsey, Jill, ed. The Uses of Photography: Art, Politics, and the Reinvention of a Medium. San Diego, CA: Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2016.

Phillips, Glenn and John Tain. "Acquisition Approval Form for 'Allan Sekula (American 1951-2013), Papers, c. 1960-2013'," accession no. 2016.M.22, March 29, 2016.

Sekula, Allan. Photography Against the Grain: Essays and Photo Works, 1973-1983. Reprint with Preface by Sally Stein. London: MACK, 2016.

[Stein, Sally]. "Allan Sekula: 1951-2013." CalArts (August 12, 2013). https://web.archive.org/web/20141031022851/http://calarts.edu/news/2013-aug-12/allan-sekula-1951-2013.

Streitberger, Alexander and Hilde Van Gelder, eds. "Disassembled" Images: Allan Sekula and Contemporary Art. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2019.

Acquisition information:
Partial gift from Sally Stein, in memory of her husband Allan Sekula. Acquired in 2016 with additional materials acquired in 2018.
Processing information:

The collection was processed from 2017 to 2024 by Judy Chou, Beth Ann Guynn, Lauren McDaniel, and Emmabeth Nanol, with the assistance of work-study students Samuel PĂ©rez and Anna Daniella Vujovic, and undergraduate intern Monet Malcolm, under the supervision of Beth Ann Guynn and Kit Messick. Beth Ann Guynn and Emmabeth Nanol wrote the finding aid, with contributions from the other processors.

Born digital materials were initially processed by Laura Schroffel who continues to create access copies for them.

Prior to its transfer to the Getty Research Institute, the collection was arranged and inventoried by Ina Steiner of the Allan Sekula Studio. The categories of material as received were: Manuscripts—Correspondence; Negative and Slide Binders; Prints (i.e photograpjic prints); Sekula Collectibles; and Film and Audio. Existing folder titles were retained whenever possible. These titles were primarily created by Sekula, but also by Sally Stein and Sekula's studio assistant, Ina Steiner.

Arrangement:

The collection is arranged in twelve series: Series I. Notebooks, 1970-2012; Series II. Slides and transparencies, 1970-2013; Series III. Photographic prints, 1971-2012; Series IV. Exhibitions and film screenings; Series V. Correspondence, 1952-2014; Series VI. Writings, 1824-2014; Series VII. Research files, 1906-2014; Series VIII. Teaching, lectures, and fellowships, 1970-2013; Series IX. Personal files, 1964-2013; Series X. Collections, circa 1800-2013; Series XI. Ephemera, 1972-2012; Series XII. Allan Sekula Studio and legacy, 2013-2020.

Physical location:
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Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Access and use

Restrictions:

Open for use by qualified researchers. Born digital content and audiovisual materials are unavailable until reformatted. Contact reference for reformatting.

Terms of access:

Contact Library Reproductions and Permissions.

Preferred citation:

Allan Sekula papers, circa 1800-2020 (bulk 1960-2013), The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Accession no. 2016.M.22.

http://hdl.handle.net/10020/archives2016m22

Location of this collection:
1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1100
Los Angeles, CA 90049-1688, US
Contact:
(310) 440-7390
Website