Through photographs and related printed materials, the Julius Lazarus Photographic Archives and Collection documents the aspirations, celebrations, protest activities, and treatment of the political left in the United States and Europe in the first fourteen years after World War II. Included in the Lazarus Archives are approximately 20,975 photographic prints (contact prints and enlargements) and 5,225 transparencies which Lazarus himself created; in the complementary Lazarus Collection are about 500 photographic prints made by others, and books, pamphlets, broadsides, and clippings which reproduce Lazarus images or otherwise reflect the themes of the Lazarus Archives. For the United States, the numerous events depicted by Lazarus in New York City (and selected events for Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.) document the activities of community activists, organized labor, civil rights groups, and political parties (the American Labor Party, Henry Wallace's Progressive Party, and the Communist Party), as well as the political activism of Paul Robeson and other nationally and internationally prominent figures. Documentation of European activities, especially in the German Democratic Republic and several other Eastern Bloc socialist states, dates chiefly from 1949 to 1953 and pertains to political, educational, cultural and sporting events, as well as to aspects of everyday life and rebuilding after the war.

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