Mess line, noon, Manzanar Relocation Center, California, 1943.

Description:

Ansel Adams. Manzanar War Relocation Center photographs, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Ansel Adams, better known for his nature photography, spent a summer at the Manzanar Relocation Center as the guest of the director, Ralph Merritt, who gave him special permission to photograph there. Photography was not generally allowed in the internment camps, but Manzanar employed Toyo Miyatake, an internee, as its official photographer, subject to close scrutiny by camp administrators. Adams concentrated on portraits and (not surprisingly) landscape views. Here, he creates an artistic view of a mundane fact of the internee’s life: endless waiting in lines, especially for food. "Three times a day the clanging of bells. Endless lines. The smell of liver drifting out across the black barrack roofs. The smell of catfish. From time to time, the smell of horse meat." (p. 50)

Attribution:

Ansel Adams, retrieved from Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/ppprs.00368/ 5/4/2021

Date:

1943