Visual Communications

Visual Communications (VC) is the oldest community-based Asian Pacific American media arts organization in the United States. VC remains a pioneer in the development of Asian Pacific American film, media, and video. Founders Duane Kubo, Robert Nakamura, Alan Ohashi, and Eddie Wong established VC in Los Angeles in 1970 through its inaugural 72-cube traveling photographic exhibit, America's Concentration Camps, about the Japanese American internment during World War II. A number of the founding members were students in the University of California Los Angeles's (UCLA's) EthnoCommunications Program, where they made their first films while advocating for Asian American studies. The four envisioned VC to be a filmmakers' collective seeking to rerepresent the history and culture of Asian Pacific Americans, use media for social change, and training of future generations of Asian Pacific American filmmakers. A core group of artists, filmmakers, photographers, and educators sought to build greater consciousness of Asian Pacific American history through media arts and visual resources. They created educational kits, photographed community events, audiotaped stories, and collected historical images of Asian American life. Transitioning from producing posters, leaflets, and photographs for Asian American community organizations, members sought to realize their larger goal of effective, sustained social and cultural change by incorporating as an independent nonprofit organization in 1971.

VC is the premier Asian Pacific media arts center in the United States. It is dedicated to the honest and accurate portrayals of the Asian Pacific American peoples, communities, and heritage through the media arts. VC's mission is to promote intercultural understanding through the creation, presentation, preservation, and support of media works by and about Asian Pacific Americans. VC was created with the understanding that media and the arts are important vehicles to organize and empower communities, build connections between generations, challenge perspectives, and create an environment for critical thinking necessary to build a more just and humane society.

Located in the historic Union Center for the Arts in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, VC is home to one of the largest Asian Pacific American photographic and moving image archives. It 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 archives include more than 300,000 photographic images, 1,500 titles in the media resource library, 100 films and videos produced by VC, and more than 1,000 hours of oral histories. The collection contains images of VC since the organization's founding in [Page 941]1970, documenting various Asian American social movements and communities in California. Members of VC not only captured the impassioned times of the movement, but their work became an innovative and natural part of the movement.