Hired by the WRA, Dorothea Lange had a history of documenting and critiquing social struggles and change. Lange was not afraid to use her photographs to critique the government for which she worked. This created a publication challenge for the WRA as Lange’s photos were frequently problematic in content and caption. Many of her images were re-captioned to cast the subject matter in a positive light.
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Alinder asserts that the truthfulness of an image is less relevant than how it is used to shape perceptions of the event it captures. She says, “In order to explore how photographs produce history, it is necessary to pose a set of questions that do not focus on whether or not they provide an accurate view of the experiences of the incarcerated, but rather on how they construct those experiences for particular audiences” (16). This approach served an analysis of Ansel Adams’s images well, as his representation of his subjects obscured or misrepresented their current situation. Adams did not approach his subjects as people but as symbols of larger ideas in his photographs.
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However, in examining Lange’s photographs the weight of each subject’s humanity is key understanding the image. While Lange does use the children’s sad faces as a rhetorical tool in her images, it is more difficult to only consider these children with respect to how Lange uses them to create a particular representation of internment. In analyzing these images, Alinder’s approach seems dehumanizing and reductive.
In this image titled by Lange "Child looking out of bus window", the power of the boy's blank or sad face is a straightforward emotional argument against internment. He is used to show the cost and damage inflicted upon the innocent. Lange's caption for this image also appeals to the pathos of the audience. It reads, “San Francisco, California. A young evacuee looks out the window of bus before it starts for Tanforan Assembly center. Evacuees will be transferred to War Relocation Authority centers for the duration.” Her use of the vague and unknown duration further emphasizes the absurdity and cruelty of this child's evacuation.
In this image titled by Lange "Child looking out of bus window", the power of the boy's blank or sad face is a straightforward emotional argument against internment. He is used to show the cost and damage inflicted upon the innocent. Lange's caption for this image also appeals to the pathos of the audience. It reads, “San Francisco, California. A young evacuee looks out the window of bus before it starts for Tanforan Assembly center. Evacuees will be transferred to War Relocation Authority centers for the duration.” Her use of the vague and unknown duration further emphasizes the absurdity and cruelty of this child's evacuation.
New arrivals at the Tanforan Assembly Center, Original WRA caption: San Bruno, California. Family of Japanese ancestry arrives at assembly center at Tanforan Race Track. Evacuees will be transferred later to War Relocation Authority centers where they will be housed for the duration. Densho, denshopd-i151-00023
In this image titled “New arrivals at the Tanforan Assembly Center,” a confused and sad looking child is again the focus. While the woman leading her smiles slightly for the camera, the little girl looks pleadingly into the camera. Lange’s caption of this image again mentions that the evacuees will be held for the unknown duration. Unlike Adams, who eschewed context for positive imagery, Lange uses the subject’s relationship to their environment and situation to portray and critique life in internment. Behind the children, multiple layers of fencing are visible and her innocent look leaves the viewer as puzzled as the child as to what possible threat she could pose.
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Lange again uses the emotional power in the child’s face to critique her situation. In viewing many of these images, Lange's goals and opinions become clear but it is hard to see these children and only view them as rhetorical devices at Lange's disposal. Because of this child's young age, it is difficult to dismiss its truthfulness as uninformative regarding the reality of the girl's situation. To do so feels tantamount to dismissing the humanity Lange so strove to capture. Alinder's analytical approach does not apply as well to Lange's techniques or subjects as it does to Adams's.
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Another image titled “New arrivals at the Tanforan Assembly Center,” children stare into the camera with much the same expression as the children above. In this image the children are packed between suitcases and the clutter and amount of people in the image serve as another critique of internment. Lange shows the children with little room to move, forced together by the rest of the line. While Adams uses objects in his photos to distract from the subjects’ current situation, the objects in Lange’s photos only serve to remind the viewer of the predicament. Adams uses older children to represent the promise of the Japanese American population but misrepresents the injustices he supposedly tried to capture.
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Ironically, though Lange was hired by the government, her images use the power of the sad faces of children to critique the very institution that hired her. While this meant many of her captions were altered and many of her images were simply never published, Lange approached the camp and its people with a more honest and sympathetic goal. Her images go beyond the coercive representation of many other photographs from this time. Though the feeling of honesty is certainly due to the way Lange uses her images to "construct those experiences for particular audiences" as Alinder argues, the subjects also transcend this understanding. The young children in Lange's images are more than the representative objects Adams uses them as. They are real people who exist beyond the borders of the photograph.
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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. New arrivals at the Turlock Assembly Center, Original WRA caption: Turlock, California. These young evacuees of Japanese ancestry are awaiting their turn for baggage inspection at this Assembly center. (denshopd-i151-00017), Densho, Dorothea Lange Collection
3. New arrivals at the Tanforan Assembly Center, Original WRA caption: San Bruno, California. Family of Japanese ancestry arrives at assembly center at Tanforan Race Track. Evacuees will be transferred later to War Relocation Authority centers where they will be housed for the duration. (denshopd-i151-00023), Densho, Dorothea Lange Collection
4. Child looking out of bus window, Original caption: San Francisco, California. A young evacuee looks out the window of bus before it starts for Tanforan Assembly center. Evacuees will be transferred to War Relocation Authority centers for the duration. (denshopd-i151-00174), Densho, Dorothea Lange Collection.
1. Alinder, Jasmine. "Introduction." Introduction. Moving Images: Photography and the Japanese American Incarceration. Urbana: U of Illinois, 2009. 1-21. Print.
2. New arrivals at the Turlock Assembly Center, Original WRA caption: Turlock, California. These young evacuees of Japanese ancestry are awaiting their turn for baggage inspection at this Assembly center. (denshopd-i151-00017), Densho, Dorothea Lange Collection
3. New arrivals at the Tanforan Assembly Center, Original WRA caption: San Bruno, California. Family of Japanese ancestry arrives at assembly center at Tanforan Race Track. Evacuees will be transferred later to War Relocation Authority centers where they will be housed for the duration. (denshopd-i151-00023), Densho, Dorothea Lange Collection
4. Child looking out of bus window, Original caption: San Francisco, California. A young evacuee looks out the window of bus before it starts for Tanforan Assembly center. Evacuees will be transferred to War Relocation Authority centers for the duration. (denshopd-i151-00174), Densho, Dorothea Lange Collection.