The collection contains photographs from military and diplomatic sources - US Information War Service, British Ministry of Information, Polish States Infromation Service. The photographs depict World War II battlefields, millitary leaders, rank and file soliders, diplomats, statesmen, meetings and conferences, war casualties, military missions of the Polish Armed Forces and Allied Forces in Western Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. The collection contains many portraits of military and political allied leaders: Generals: Wladyslaw Sikorski, Kazimierz Sosnkowski, Wladyslaw Anders, Omar Bradley, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Chiang Kai-shek, Leclerc, Montgomery and Presidents: Wladyslaw Raczkiewicz, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman. The collection also contains some original photo from the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 and photos from American Polonia events e.g. from General Jozef Haller's Testimonial Dinner in New York (1940) and from meetings of John and Robert Kennedy with Polonia. There are also portraitsof Polish intellectual leaders and the Presidents of Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America (PIASA). Arrangement in Series: By format - Glass Slides, Photographs and Postcards. Inside each series they are arranged by subjects.

Charles Burk was a Polish American editor and writer, City Editor of the Polish Daily "Zgoda", member of the Polish National Alliance. He was the first benefactor of the PIASA Archive. The collection of photographs was dedicated to him as a Burke Charles Memorial Collection. Acquisition Note: Gift of Charles Burke c.a. 1960.