Collections Collection Descriptions

  • Film and Video Collection

    The VSW Film Archive contains nearly five thousand 16mm films, some of which were donated by the Rochester Public Library Reynolds Audio/Visual Department, the Audiovisual/Technical Services Division at SUNY Brockport, and the University of Rochester

  • Photographic Print Collection

    The Photographic Print Collection contains 15,000 original photographic or photo-mechanical prints made by 2,200 known photographers and more than 600,000 examples of vernacular or anonymous images.

  • Independent Press and Artist Book Collection

    VSW’s Independent Press Archive was established from VSW’s Press publishing activity and Book Bus distribution program, both established in the 1970s. The collection holds over 6,000 artists’ books and many fine examples of independently published poetry from the 1960s through today.

  • Lantern slide with flowers and a butterfly.

    Lantern Slide Collection

    The VSW Lantern Slide Archive houses a collection of over 60,000 nineteenth and early twentieth century glass lantern slides and related equipment.

  • A book with a face on the spine is held up to a person's body.

    Search Books and Periodicals

    Search the books in the Nathan Lyons Research Center Library

  • Nurse looks at the camera and folds towels. From the Soibelman Collection.

    Soibelman Syndicate News Agency Archive

    The Soibelman Syndicate News Agency Archive is an extensive and diverse collection of more than 40,000 news agency photographs from the interwar period.

  • Joseph Selle Fox Movie Flash Collection

    The Fox Movie Flash collection, photographed by Joseph N. Selle and his crew of street photographers, consists of approximately one million images of people on the streets of San Francisco from the 1940s to the 1960s.

  • Primary Resources

    Documents and correspondence related to photographic artists and historians from the mid 1960s through the 1980s.