The Photographers
Dorothea Lange was a documentary photographer hired by the FSA and WRA to document historical events such as the Great Depression and the Internment of Japanese Americans. Though hired by the government, Lange strove to portray Japanese internment in its harsh reality. However, since she rarely had control of the captions published with her images, this was difficult.
Ansel Adams was primarily a landscape and nature photographer but knew the director of the Manzanar War Relocation Center and was allowed to photograph life at the center in 1943. In his book, Born Free and Equal, Adams explained his purpose in taking the photographs saying, "I have tried to record the influence of the tremendous landscape of Inyo on the life and spirit of thousands of people living by force of circumstance in the Relocation Center of Manzanar" (Adams 9).
These two photographers, working at different camps with different goals, a year apart, each captured more honest depictions of internment in their photographs of Japanese American children than either could in the majority of their photographs of adults. However, while as subjects of the photographs, children offer some insight into internment, they are also objects in the photographs. As objects in Adams’s work, the children serve to promote “his desire to make the case for the inclusion of Japanese Americans into the body politic” (Alinder 64). Children are shown as studious, almost always with a book or going to or from school. He uses images of the interrupted and makeshift schooling of the camp to cast Japanese Americans as educated, determined future contributing members of society. In doing so, Adams almost completely disregards the current situation of the children in the photographs and chooses to focus on their futures as American citizens and power as symbols in his work. Dorothea Lange had a different mission, wanting to use her photographs to critique the internment. Though she uses the children as objects to elicit sympathy and further consideration, she also captures them as human. Instead of depicting them studying intensely, the majority of Lange’s images show children being led into camps with wan, confused looks on their faces. Lange uses children not only to humanize Japanese Americans but also in an attempt to not-so-subtly demonize and critique the American government.