Ansel Adams took a series of images of schoolchildren in the Manzanar Relocation Center. The majority of these photos depict children reading, studying or around the school room. Few of his images show children engaged in other activities. His focus on children learning reveals his political goal: to use the act of reading or schooling as a tool to present Japanese Americans as intelligent, studious, English-literate, and competent members of a democratic society. Though the perception of Asian Americans as a model minority did not emerge until the 1960s and 70s Adams’s images foreground this stereotype in his representation of Japanese American children in internment.
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In a letter to the Library of Congress, Adams stated that “the purpose of my work was to show how these people, suffering under great injustice, and loss of property, business, and professions, had overcome the sense of defeat and [despair] by building for themselves a vital community in an arid (but magnificent) environment” (Adams qtd. Library of Congress). While his goal was noble and fairly well-founded, his execution of the project left the suffering unrepresented, creating a confusing representation of internment. The smiling faces and studious children endear the viewer to the subject but are unable to portray the supposed “sense of defeat and despair.”
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In her book Moving Images, Jasmine Alinder argues that photographs are better understood as historical artifacts by “examining the ways in which photography was used to construct or project representations of Japanese Americans during the war” than by “evaluating the status of the photographs as true or false” (16). This includes the ways in which the subjects of the photographs were used to create the representations. In his image, “Children at Sunday school class” (above), young girls with Bibles on their laps read small books, apparently aloud. The girls sit neatly with their legs crossed, too absorbed by the text to look at the camera. Adams takes advantage of the symbolism of books and reading to simultaneously cast the girls as focused, Christian, and literate with this image.
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As Lissa Paul describes in Keywords for Children’s Literature, “By the nineteenth century, “literacy” conventionally came to mean both reading and writing, but was no longer primarily used for religious or political purposes. Instead, it was becoming a powerful cultural tool, used to inculcate ideas of national identity” (Paul, Keywords). In using reading as shorthand for literacy, Adams is asserting that Japanese Americans, especially children, are or are becoming fully Americanized citizens. He uses the young girls to represent their generation as one that exhibits American ideals. Nothing of their experience as internees is suggested in the photos; they are merely evidence Adams presents to support the goal of his project. He uses not only his skill as a photographer to create the image of Japanese Americans he would like to present, but the girls themselves. Their humanity and experience is cast aside for their power as objects in his photos.
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In this photograph titled simply, “School children”(left) by Adams, small groups of smiling teenage girls and boys walk along a wide dirt road carrying armloads of books. Because the camp is far in the background the group appears to be happily strolling out into the world, books in hand. In his book, Born Free and Equal, Adams captions this image with a quote from the previous page, “MANZANAR IS ONLY A DETOUR ON THE ROAD OF AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP….” (Adams 24). Again, Adams chooses not to focus on any problems there might be in the camp or with the camp’s existence, but points out how well-educated the Japanese Americans emerging from the camp will be.
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His suggestion that “Manzanar is only a detour” diminishes the immorality, “suffering under great injustice,” and other harsh aspects of life in the internment camp. Alinder argues that, "Adams's tendency to portray Japanese Americans as servile and industrious, and his own subscription to the underlying rationale of the incarceration...indicate the limits of his own photographic politics" (20). This lack of attention to the internment is a theme of his collection. Even though the camp is present in the background of this image, it does not appear foreboding or malicious. The smiling faces suggest the camp could even be a pleasant suburban neighborhood. Again, the subjects are not depicted as any more troubled than the mountains in the background; “defeat and despair” are absent. Adams focuses on these students not as humans but as symbols of an educated, studious population.
In this photo titled "Mr. and Mrs. Henry J. Tsurutani and baby Bruce," a couple smiles obligingly at the camera from their seemingly normal kitchen table. Again, little suggests their location in an internment camp except, perhaps, the mismatched chairs. Adams does not attempt to insert any critique of their predicament into his photographs, because as Alinder points out, he agreed with the purpose of internment. Without context, this little family appears to be a fairly typical Japanese American, or simply American, family. Once more, he focuses on the half of his goal of showing the “vital community” and leaves out the suffering and injustices he alludes to. This little family and the few other he photographed are used to represent the entirety of Japanese American families. In attempting to show that they are non-threatening and average he also cast internment as non-threatening and ordinary. In carrying out his goal, Adams does justice to neither to problems of internment—casting it as trivial and of little consequence—nor the individuals and families that lived through it. He does not photograph his subjects as people but as the greater ideas and beliefs he wants their images can represent.
For more on how the people behind the cameras shape the images of internment visit Jacqueline's page.
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Works Cited
1. Alinder, Jasmine. "Introduction." Introduction. Moving Images: Photography and the Japanese American Incarceration. Urbana: U of Illinois, 2009. 1-21. Print.
2. "Ansel Adams's Photographs of Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar." Library of Congress. <loc.gov>. Web. 10 Nov. 2014.
3. Adams, Ansel, 1902-1984. Born free and equal, photographs of the loyal Japanese-Americans at Manzanar Relocation Center, Inyo County, California, by Ansel Adams. New York, U.S. Camera, 1944.
112 p. illus. (incl. ports.) 28 cm.
F870.J3 A57
4. Lissa Paul. "Literacy." Keywords for Children's Literature. New York: New York University Press, 2011. Credo Reference. Web. 22 November 2014.
5. Adams, Ansel. Children at Sunday school class, Manzanar Relocation Center, California. c1943. Photograph. Lib. of Cong., Washington D.C. Lib. of Cong. Web. 14 Nov 2014.
6. Adams, Ansel. School children, Manzanar Relocation Center, California. c1943. Photograph. Lib. of Cong., Washington D.C. Lib. of Cong. Web. 14 Nov 2014.
7. Adams, Ansel. Mr. and Mrs. Henry J. Tsurutani and baby Bruce, Manzanar Relocation Center, California. c1943. Photograph. Lib. of Cong., Washington D.C. Lib. of Cong. Web. 14 Nov 2014.
1. Alinder, Jasmine. "Introduction." Introduction. Moving Images: Photography and the Japanese American Incarceration. Urbana: U of Illinois, 2009. 1-21. Print.
2. "Ansel Adams's Photographs of Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar." Library of Congress. <loc.gov>. Web. 10 Nov. 2014.
3. Adams, Ansel, 1902-1984. Born free and equal, photographs of the loyal Japanese-Americans at Manzanar Relocation Center, Inyo County, California, by Ansel Adams. New York, U.S. Camera, 1944.
112 p. illus. (incl. ports.) 28 cm.
F870.J3 A57
4. Lissa Paul. "Literacy." Keywords for Children's Literature. New York: New York University Press, 2011. Credo Reference. Web. 22 November 2014.
5. Adams, Ansel. Children at Sunday school class, Manzanar Relocation Center, California. c1943. Photograph. Lib. of Cong., Washington D.C. Lib. of Cong. Web. 14 Nov 2014.
6. Adams, Ansel. School children, Manzanar Relocation Center, California. c1943. Photograph. Lib. of Cong., Washington D.C. Lib. of Cong. Web. 14 Nov 2014.
7. Adams, Ansel. Mr. and Mrs. Henry J. Tsurutani and baby Bruce, Manzanar Relocation Center, California. c1943. Photograph. Lib. of Cong., Washington D.C. Lib. of Cong. Web. 14 Nov 2014.