Life Amid The Harshness

http://www.zocolopublicsquare.org/2015/12/02/ansel-adams-captures-t...se-american-internment-camp/viewing/glimpses/#.VmJFdhBltYk.mailto

Manzanar War Relocation Center sign
businessinsider.com

Hello Everyone:

Today we return to the subject of immigration.  In this case, a dark moment in the American immigrant experience-the internment of Japanese-American citizens during World War II.  Blogger has decided to return to this because of its timeliness.  Rather than present a post on the grimness of life in the internment camps, Blogger has come across a review of American photographer Ansel Adams's photographs of Manzanar, recently publisheded by Zocolo Public Square, that presents ordinary life among the harshness of the camp life.  The scene present ordinary American citizens, locked up for no other reason than their ancestry, trying to do the best they can under extraordinary circumstance.  At times, the images almost seem absurd, yet they are a testament to sheer determination to carry one inspire of the bigotry that put them there.  The pictures in this post  were all taken by Ansel Adams and just treasures to behold.

Pool in the Pleasure Park
Manzanar War Relocation Center
loc.gov

Ansel Adams is one of the foremost photographers of the twentieth century.  The late Mr. Adams is best-known for his stunning photographs of Yosemite's Half Dome.  During the Second World War, he tried his hand at documentary photography, turning his lense on scenes of daily life at the Japanese-American internment camp in Manzanar, California.  The black and white pictures include "...images of people going about their daily lives-schoolchildren during a fire drill, farmers at work in a potato field, a nurse in uniform."  These images, are part of an exhibit titled "Manzanar: The Wartime Photographs of Ansel Adams," at the Skirball Cultural Center (http://www.skirball.org/exhibitions/manzanar-ansel-adams)

Nurse Aiko Yamaguchi
Manzanar War Relocation Center
bainbridgehisotry.org

The photographs are remarkable because they present images of strength and resilience of the families trapped behind the gates because of their ancestry.  Also what makes them so remarkable is despite the harshness of the setting, the internees were very determined to carry on with their lives.  It may seem strange to carry on daily life amid the grim conditions but Blogger believes that this was  an act of passive defience.  A way for the Japanese-American citizens to tell their jailers, "You may imprision our bodies but you will not imprison our souls and our spirits."

Ansel Adams arrived at Manzanar with a goal, He wanted to show strenth and resilience in contrast to the anti-Japanese imagery and racist sentiment that was out there, according to assistant curator Linde Lehtinen.  The exhibit is presented in conjunction with the Japanese American National Museum (http://www.janm.org).  Mr. Adams's photographs are presented along side images take by Dorothea Lange and Toyo Miyatake, as well as objects and artifacts used in daily life at Manzanar and the other "relocation centers" in the Western United States and Arkansas.  Mr. Adams's photographs were later published in a 1944 ironically titled book Born Free and Equal. The reviews were mixed, to say the very least.  Ms. Lehtinen said,

The Izuno Family
Manzanar War Relocation Center
ops.ogv

There are accounts of so-called patroits burning the book and calling Adams 'un-American' because he was sympathetic to Japanese-Americans.

However, there were those among the photography community that believed that Mr. Adams did not adequately present the harsh realities of camp life.  "They wondered why people smiled and appearred so industrious under Adams's gaze.  After all, Manzanar was a prison camp."  Ms. Lehtinen continues,

Part of that had to do with the timing...The camp had just been constructed when Lange visited in June 1942.  She captured the "stark, difficult moments of the forced evacuation" and a place that looked different from the one Adams first photographed in October 1943.  By the time Adams arrived, people had tried to make improvements in the barracks they lived.  Instead of bare wooden floorboards, there was linoleum, for example.  People knew who Adams was and that he was coming to photograph them; they probably dressed in their finest clothes...

Cemetery monument
Manzanar War Relocation Center
lostmag.com

Another issue is Ansel Adams's photographic style-"polished and pristine."  Mr. Adams was not a portrait photographer, he was more comfortable taking pictures of landscapes.  One example is an semi-aerial photograph of Manzanar, showing clusters of people.  Ms. Lehtinan commented,

...you're able to see his interest in creating a panoramic view of this beautiful place-and I use that word because he saw it that way.


The residents of Manzanar may have beenn deprived of  their liberty but they continued to live, work, and go to school amid the backrop of the stunning mountains.  Ansel Adams used his camera to document how people lived in this place of terrible beauty.