Allan Sekula: Photographic Work

This essay examines the photographic output of Allan Sekula (1951–2013), focusing on the unrealized projects and abandoned works held in the collection of the Getty Research Institute. The artist’s archive spans the full spectrum of photographic work, including snapshots, test images, trials, uncompleted works, and unprinted images. Items also include Sekula’s notebooks, journals, correspondence, teaching notes, newspaper clippings, and photocopied texts. The archive is part of the fragmentary lifeworld of the artist in his studio, as it contains photographs that had been made and kept throughout Sekula’s life but were never incorporated into a complete sequence or finished work. The structure of his archive and the objects within it encourage us to consider not only Sekula’s vision of Los Angeles but also the greater social, political, and unconscious impulses that drive the making of images.