The Visual Studies Workshop History Archive consists of several media collections related to the various organizational activities over 50+ years of operation. Visual Studies Workshop is seminal in photo history, actively working to alter how photography was taught, learned, and interpreted. Staff and students alike, aware of the unique import of the new events unfolding around them, kept copious paper records and frequently turned the camera lens to self-document, creating a rich body of historical record. Historical Archive Collections are open to the public for research.

The Student (Alumni) Trace Collection began as a requirement of MFA students: to leave a trace of their Thesis project as a record of individual presence and production. Early students tended to compile and leave final photo or print portfolios; over time “Thesis Trace” became open to interpretation and reflected the wider variety of media and experimental pursuits in practice at VSW. Artists’ books, video tapes, and  documents of performance students might serve as a student’s trace of their time at VSW.

The Trace Collection began to expand in less formal ways, past and future. Periodic work calls would unearth stashes of student work left behind in studio cabinets, brought into the Research Center to attach to alumni names where possible, or grouped anonymously. And as Alumni moved through the world, advancing in their fields and making new work, they began to surface in our collections with new publications and collections.

Alumni themselves have emerged as figures worthy of research for future generations. And so recently the Trace Collection has come to be a more comprehensive cataloguing of the material objects and evidence of their student careers and beyond. Trace Records exist as metadata compilations for each individual alumni, pointing to their authored objects that exist in the Thesis Trace, Moving Image Collection, Photographic Collection, Independent Publishing Archive, Research Library, and Paper Archive, student and professional alike.

VSW has paired with the Empire Archival Discovery Cooperative of New York State to

A collection of 35mm Slides were produced for documentation of institutional programming and operations from VSW’s inception through the 1990s. A substantial collection of VSW Posters & Ephemera are preserved from the long history of exhibitions and workshops staged by VSW or related media organizations. The Information Files consist of comprehensive documents and correspondence related to photographic artists and VSW institutional operations from the mid 1960s through the 1980s.