This collection contains manuscript material, photographs (mounted and unmounted), negatives, slides, and photo CDs containing work by or about Gary Mark Smith. Much of the collection comes from his street photography work. Also included are newspaper articles from when he was a student reporter for the University Daily Kansan as well as Smith's travel backpack.

The manuscript material in this collection includes resumes, certificates, newsletters, exhibition programs, newspaper and magazine articles, itineraries, correspondence, books, and scrapbooks related to Smith's professional and personal life.

The photographic material comprises the bulk of the collection and has been organized by the size of the material and the series to which it belongs. Some series may be in multiple locations due to the varying sizes of the material. Smith’s 2023 addition to the collection typically consisted of large groups of prints and negatives that were sometimes identified at the folder, envelope, or box level and other times were not identified at all, so these images are not described in as great detail. [Brackets] indicate that Spencer staff has described or contextualized unlabeled materials. Some photographs show potentially disturbing or offensive images and have been labeled as “explicit.”

Topics covered by the photographs include but are not limited to El Salvador death squads, University of Kansas student life and street life in Lawrence, the fall of the Berlin Wall and European reunification after the end of the Sovient Union, the volcano and residents of Monserrat who refused to leave when it was erupting, Amsterdam, the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, the Rocinha Favela in Brazil, the United Nations Peacekeeping Mission in the city of Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo, scenes from nature, and dreamscapes, or layouts of photographs fashioned together by Smith.

There are also two music compact discs with cover art by Gary Mark Smith.