Response to work by Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams of Japanese Internment Camps

My art history seminar actually just looked at Adams and Lange’s work of Japanese internment camps recently, talking about how the Japanese American body was represented. ­­­­Elena Tajima Creef wrote an essay in which she describes how Adams tried to reinscribe this body with patriotism and loyalty. She argues, which I can see clearly in Adams work, that he tried to represent these interned individuals as counter-images to that of the wartime imagery of the Japanese as the enemy. He has two broad categories, those of landscapes, which he imagined instilled some kind of strength and endurance in the Japanese Americans, as well as portraits, many shot from below, in “American” clothing, and often of schoolgirls, giving a heroic and all-American purity. What I think is important to note is that Adams, in trying to champion his subjects, takes away part of their identity. They must fully relinquish all that is Japanese in order to be considered loyal to America.

What Adams photography does not reveal is the stark living situation and militaristic qualities of the internment camps, some of which was captured by Dorothea Lange. Lange was restricted to what she could photograph (never guns or watchtowers for example), but she still managed to portray her subjects as tragic players. What translates in her photographs is the immense amount of time spent by these individuals waiting and the loss they were forced to endure by these imposed situations. Many of Lange’s photographs were not published at the time, perhaps because they might have invoked the same sense of national shame we feel now, but was crucial not to display during the war. In light of this, do we think Adams photographs are just and fair representations of the Japanese American? Were they effective in revealing, perhaps not the atrocity of the camps, but the lack necessity of such institutions? Is it alright to shed all “essential Japaneseness” in order to validate a point? If Lange’s more tragic images had been seen, would it have incited outrage at Japanese American treatment, or would it simply have been ignored in the effort to visualize the Japanese as enemy? Lange too sought to demonstrate patriotism, but combining this image with heartbreak was perhaps not what the American (white) public of the time wanted to see - or at least the government did not.

Still a source of national shame and delicacy, these images are important in that they depict the experiences of the interned Japanese Americans, but they are only a thin slice and some times distorted image of the reality of this experience. For this reason, recounts and opinions from the Japanese Americans that survived this ordeal, whether  in writing or photography, like that of  Toyo Miyatake, are an important part of giving these individuals agency, translating an experience in which they we once subjugated.