Visual Communications is the first non-profit organization in the nation dedicated to the honest and accurate portrayals of the Asian Pacific American peoples, communities and heritage through the media arts. The Visual Communications Archives is the repository for the records generated by and related to the history of Visual Communications. Its purpose is to document the history of the organization by organizing, preserving, and creating access to primary materials for staff use, as well as by scholars who are interested in Visual Communications’ role in the Asian American communities and history.
The Visual Communications Archives is recognized as one of the nation’s most comprehensive repositories of 20th Century Asian Pacific American history with unique holdings in historical still and moving images and oral histories. The holdings include over 300,000 photographic images, 1,500 titles in the Media Resource Library, 100 films and videos produced by Visual Communications, and over 1,000 hours of oral histories. The Visual Communications Archives is unique due to the diversity of its collections in pan-Asian content, a variety of formats and subjects, and the number of items that are under Visual Communications ownership.
The Visual Communications Archives' digital collection at California Revealed consists of moving images and audio recordings from the 1930s to 1990s. The collection includes oral history interviews with Asian Pacific American communities in California, as well as home movies, 1970s footage of San Francisco Chinatown, and footage of a 1971 community health day held in Los Angeles.
