Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment 
asked by tacos on October 31, 2006 9:23 PM
Censored by the U.S. Army, Dorothea Lange's unseen photographs are the extraordinary photographic record of the Japanese American internment saga.
This indelible work of visual and social history confirms Dorothea Lange's stature as one of the twentieth century's greatest American photographers. Presenting 119 images originally censored by the U.S. Army—the majority of which have never been published—Impounded evokes the horror of a community uprooted in the early 1940s and the stark reality of the internment camps. With poignancy and sage insight, nationally known historians Linda Gordon and Gary Okihiro illuminate the saga of Japanese American internment: from life before Executive Order 9066 to the abrupt roundups and the marginal existence in the bleak, sandswept camps. In the tradition of Roman Vishniac's A Vanished World, Impounded, with the immediacy of its photographs, tells the story of the thousands of lives unalterably shattered by racial hatred brought on by the passions of war. 104 photographs.
This indelible work of visual and social history confirms Dorothea Lange's stature as one of the twentieth century's greatest American photographers. Presenting 119 images originally censored by the U.S. Army—the majority of which have never been published—Impounded evokes the horror of a community uprooted in the early 1940s and the stark reality of the internment camps. With poignancy and sage insight, nationally known historians Linda Gordon and Gary Okihiro illuminate the saga of Japanese American internment: from life before Executive Order 9066 to the abrupt roundups and the marginal existence in the bleak, sandswept camps. In the tradition of Roman Vishniac's A Vanished World, Impounded, with the immediacy of its photographs, tells the story of the thousands of lives unalterably shattered by racial hatred brought on by the passions of war. 104 photographs.
Reviews
0%
0%
Although the text is informative in telling the history of Japanese internment during World War II, the images speak for themselves, page after page in stark black and white, the young and innocent, the old and careworn, carrying rope-bound suitcases and cardboard boxes, standing in long lines, waiting to be processed by indifferent jailors, an entire race herded into the camps that will be home for the war years, disenfranchising them of investment in community and the pride of being Americans. As history has proven over and over, fear is a monster that cannot be contained once the public is infected, the vulnerable a source of suspicion, marked by the color of their skin and the shape of their eyes.
Whole families gather in these telling photographs, leaving treasured belongings behind, grandparents to infants, all swept up in an infamous display of mistrust in a country suddenly driven to panic by a surprise attack, demanding a quick response from their government. Lange has a particular talent for capturing the very human face of the internment camps, children with ID tags attached to their coats, chain link fences topped with barbed wire circling the arid landscape, family laundry hanging from a window, the barren rows of housing units assailed by constant dust storms, women working on camouflage nets for the War Department.
Famous for her Depression era photos of migrant farm workers, this series of photographs, while ordered by the US Government, were censored for the duration of the war. The most striking feature of the collection is the very American look of these people, standing proud while saluting the flag, teenagers trying to act cool in spite of their surroundings, family gatherings that are familiar Americana. It is also important to mention that, in spite of the extreme measures undertaken, "no Japanese-American was ever found guilty of espionage". Lange's work is enhanced by the two essays that precede the collection of photographs, Linda Gordon's biographical essay on Lange's life and work and Gary Okihiro's "An American Story", outlining Japanese immigration to America and the history of Japanese internment, with personal anecdotes by detainees. This is a moving portrait of a country's response to threat, reminding us to value the precious tenets of freedom. Luan Gaines/2006.
reviewed by rafit on November 17, 2006 3:22 PM