46 Photos Of Life At A Japanese Internment Camp, Taken By Ansel Adams
While America celebrates Victory over Japan Day on September 2, the price of that victory should also be remembered. In the summer of 1943 Ansel Adams made his first visit to Manzanar War Relocation Camp in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Invited by the warden, Adams sought to document the living conditions of the camp’s inhabitants.
His photos were published in a book titled “Born Free And Equal: The Story of Loyal Japanese-Americans” in 1944, with an accompanying exhibition at MoMA.
In 1965, when he donated the images to the Library of Congress, Adams shared some thoughts on the project:
“The purpose of my work was to show how these people, suffering under a great injustice, and loss of property, businesses and professions, had overcome the sense of defeat and dispair (sic) by building for themselves a vital community in an arid (but magnificent) environment,” he said.
