blackest Loc: Ireland

upworthy has an interesting article about the photographs Ansel Adams took of the internment camps in 1943 and the camps and people themselves.

It's a side of Ansel Adams and the United States rarely seen.

blackest Loc: Ireland

Here is a link to it
http://www.upworthy.com/in-1943-one-of-americas-best-photographers-captured-life-inside-a-japanese-internment-camp

tradio Loc: Oxford, Ohio

Very interesting, thanks.

mtclicker Loc: Montana

Very interesting post. Thank you

Grnway Loc: Manchester, NH

Not one of our country's shining moments. Good to see someone of Mr. Adams' gravitas have the courage to do the right thing and record this for posterity.

Thanks for posting.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

:thumbup:

Billbobboy42 Loc: Center of Delmarva

Very interesting. I seem to remember we did not round up German Americans and put them in camps. Or did I miss a piece of that history?

blackest Loc: Ireland

It has happened repeatedly around the world in various countries
by various countries
List of concentration & internment camps

blackest Loc: Ireland

I think you missed a piece

from the link I posted above

Apaflo Loc: Anchorage, Alaska

The cited link doesn't actually do justice to what Ansel Adams did. We should recognize that Dorothea Lange also photographed Manzanar, unfortunately it is very hard to find any of the images she made there.

Adams wrote a book entitled "Born Free and Equal", which included nearly half of the more than 200 images that Adams made. The book was published in 1944. Along with the original negatives and prints, the book was eventually donated to the Library of Congress with the specific intent by Adams that they remain easily accessed.

The entire collection is at

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/manz/

and the book itself is copied at

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=gdc3&fileName=scd0001_20020123001bfpage.db

Besides the images, the book is perhaps even more interesting for the one page description entitled "a note on the photographer" which can be seen on page 100. We rarely see information from Adams on other than landscape photography, even though he basically earned his living for many years as a typical "commercial photographer" doing everything but landscapes.

The entire series of photographs is fascinating in several ways. Dorothea Lange chided Adams for taking a few landscapes at Manzanar, saying "It was shameful. That's Ansel. He doesn't have much sense about these things."

A few years ago I discovered another interesting quirk in the images.

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pnp/ppprs/00000/00007r.jpg

The above picture is nurse Aiko Hamaguchi as photographed by Adams at Manzanar. In the 200 plus images from Manzanar, there are 22 that include Hamaguchi! The next closest number of multiple images of any single person is only 4. Obviously Adams was impressed. He kept track of her after the war for at least some period of time. I was not able to track her past working in Detroit for a time.

joer Loc: Colorado/Illinois

Not our country's finest moment and it seems that we may be on the brink of doing it again if some individuals have their say.

A side to Ansel Adams not well known. Thanks for posting.

Apaflo Loc: Anchorage, Alaska

That is true, some were. But note that 120,000 plus Japanese were interned. Only just over 10,000 Germans were interned or relocated.

Rongnongno Loc: FL

AA images were sanitized.

A few of the internees took their own pictures at a greater risk as cameras were not authorized as a whole. Only one Japanese photographer had obtained a 'license' to photograph and his work was far superior to AA in many ways. I do not recall his name but when I do I will post it.

'Pretty Japanese nurse' indeed.

NPR link