The collection consists of two major subdivisions. The first is negatives and prints from Nowinski's Holocaust collection totalling some 6,250 images and 1,548 prints, and includes the following projects: "In fitting memory; the art and politics of Holocaust memorials," the Segal Holocaust Memorial, the 50th anniversary Warsaw ghetto uprising, and the opening of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. The second subdivision is Judaica photographs, totalling some 8,905 images. This segment includes three projects: the Karaite Jews, Israel, and the Soviet Jews of San Francisco.

Ira Nowinski is an American photographer of Polish and Hungarian Jewish descent. Born ca. 1942 and raised in New York, he was the first person in his family born in the United States. At the age of 42, he was prodded by opera singer Regina Resnick to do a photo essay around the Jewish milieu. He had previously done photo essays of the North Beach, San Francisco, area, of the evacuation of elderly citizens from hotels in the South of Market area of San Francisco, and of the Southeast Asian Community in the same city. In addition, he had been the staff photographer of the San Francisco Opera since 1978.

10 linear ft. (ca. 15,000 photographs and negatives)

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