The archive comprises four hundred boxes of correspondence, illustrations, photographs, notebooks, and research materials that highlight the artist's career as an artist, writer, filmmaker, and critic. At this moment the Getty is cataloguing the collection. Allan Sekula (American, 1951–2013) revitalized documentary photography, provided critical foundations for theorizing the relationship between word and image, and was one of the earliest artists to cast a critical eye on globalization as social phenomenon. This archive documents his practice as an artist and writer, serving as a defining resource for researchers interested not only in Sekula but in the transformation of photography as both a medium and an art form in the postwar era. Sekula was a professor at the California Institute of the Arts from 1985 until his death in 2013. With his book, Photography Against the Grain: Essays and Photo Works 1973–83 (1984), the artist provides a new concept to the documentary function of photography.