The Frederick Sommer archive contains materials documenting Sommer’s life from his childhood in Brazil, to education at Cornell University, tuberculosis recuperation in Switzerland, long residence in Prescott, Arizona, and up to his death in 1999. Materials include personal papers, original artwork and photographic materials, correspondence, financial records, audio recordings, exhibition announcements, manuscripts, as well as lecture and teaching notes. Materials date from 1909 to 1999 with the bulk of the collection dating from the 1970s to 1990s. When received, Sommer’s personal papers were stored in a variety of boxes and folders, without discernable order beyond the simplest sorting of letters and negatives. Staff members have created artificial series to aggregate like materials for ease of research use and have compiled a number of indexes and tables to provide greater specificity in retrieval of relevant information. The Sommer Archive is rich in personal letters written by other artists, photographers, gallery owners, curators, and publishers. In some cases, Sommer drafted his replies on an attached sheet or envelope, but he was not systematic about saving copies of the letters he wrote. His other writings, essays, and aphorisms were preserved with great care and the researcher will find many drafts and proofed pages. Exhibitions of Sommer’s paintings, drawings, collected objects, and photographs are documented in the archive with an assortment of documents including installation views, checklists, and correspondence with curators. Sale of his photographs, including prices and names of buyers, is documented in the records of LIGHT Gallery and the Pace MacGill Gallery. Sommer’s experimental approach to photography is demonstrated in the diversity of types of photographic materials including items constructed by Sommer specifically to be photographed. Anatomical atlases purchased by Sommer in the 1990s and carefully cut up to furnish materials for collages exist in the archive as well as the negatives made of the finished collages. The majority of negatives were not numbered or titled by the photographer. They have been sorted by size of negative and then arranged chronologically. Access to the fragile negatives will be granted at the discretion of the Archivist. Contact prints do not exist for every negative, but references to published images are provided whenever possible. Please scroll down and click on the linked "External Document" to view appendices. This collection consists of a selection of works from Series 18: Audiovisual Materials.