A rare set of photographs by photographer Ansel Adams (1902-84), documenting Japanese Americans interned at the Manzanar War Relocation Center, has been added to American Memory, the Library's Web site of more than 7 million items from the Library of Congress and other repositories. The Ansel Adams collection is being made available during the 100th anniversary of his birth.
"'Suffering Under a Great Injustice': Ansel Adams's Photographs of Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar" features 209 photographic prints and 242 original negatives taken by Adams in 1943. Their subject is some of the Japanese Americans who were relocated from their homes during World War II and interned in the Manzanar War Relocation Center in California. For the first time researchers are able to see online those photographs Adams made of what Congress called "the grave injustice" done to people of Japanese ancestry during the war.
Digital scans of both Adams' original negatives and his photographic prints appear side by side, allowing viewers to see his darkroom technique and, in particular, how he cropped his prints. The Web presentation also includes digital images of the first edition of "Born Free and Equal," Adams' 1944 publication based on his work at Manzanar.
One of America's most well-known photographers, Adams is renowned for his Western landscapes. Best remembered for his views of Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada, he made photographs that emphasize the natural beauty of the land. By contrast, Adams' photographs of people have sometimes been overlooked.
After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, fear of a Japanese invasion and of subversive acts by Japanese Americans prompted the government to move more than 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry from California, southern Arizona, and western Washington and Oregon to 10 relocation camps. Those forcibly removed from their homes, businesses, and possessions included Japanese immigrants legally forbidden to become citizens (Issei), their American-born children (Nisei), and children of the American-born (Sansei).
The relocation struck a personal chord with Adams when Harry Oye, his parents' longtime employee who was an Issei in poor health, was summarily taken into custody by authorities and sent to a hospital halfway across the country in Missouri. Angered by this event, Adams welcomed an opportunity in the fall of 1943 to photograph Japanese Americans at Manzanar.
In a departure from his usual landscape photography, Adams produced an essay on the Japanese Americans interned in this beautiful but remote and undeveloped region where the mountains served both as a metaphorical fortress and as an inspiration for the internees. Adams concentrated on the internees and their activities and photographed family life in the barracks; people at work as welders, farmers, and garment makers; and recreational activities, including baseball and volleyball.
Adams donated the original negatives and prints from his work at Manzanar to the Library of Congress between 1965 and 1968 "so that their images could continue to be a public reminder of a heinous wrong," according to Mary Street Alinder, a chief assistant to Ansel Adams and the author of "Ansel Adams: A Biography."
The Library also holds two Ansel Adams portfolios, "Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras" and "What Majestic Word," as well as two single images and two copies of his limited edition oversized volume, "Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail," published by Archetype Press in 1938.
"Parmelian Prints" was Ansel Adams's first portfolio, published in 1927 at the beginning of his photographic career when he was only 25. He used the title "Parmelian" rather than "Photographic" to glamorize the silver gelatin process (then considered mundane) that he used to make his breathtaking prints. Adams wrote to his future wife about the project, "My photographs have now reached a stage when they are worthy of the world's critical examination. I have suddenly come upon a new style which I believe will place my work equal to anything of its kind. I have always favored the effect of engravings–the neat, clean, clear-cut technique fascinates me. In this new effect I will try to combine the two processes of photography and the press into a result that will be exceptionally beautiful and unique…."
"What Majestic Word," a portfolio of 15 nature studies, each of which is signed, was published in 1963.
In his foreword to "Sierra Nevada," Ansel Adams described what he was trying to convey with his photographs (which Alfred Stieglitz later characterized as "perfect"): "…they attempt to convey the experiences and the moods derived from a close association with the mountains….The grandiose elements of the scene are subordinated to the more intimate aspects–for it is through the reception of beauty in detail that our experiences are formed and qualified….The work, then, is a transmission of emotional experience–personal, it is true, as any work of art must be–but inclusive in the sense that others have enjoyed similar experiences so that they will understand this interpretation of the intimate and intense beauty of the Sierra Nevada."
The Ansel Adams collections are housed in the Library's Prints and Photographs Division, where they are available to researchers in the division's reading room. The division preserves and makes available a wide range of photographs and fine prints–including the work of portrait photographers Mathew Brady and Arnold Genthe, photographs by Lewis Hines from the National Child Labor Committee, thousands of Farm Security Administration photographs documenting the lives of ordinary Americans during the Great Depression–as well as fine prints and drawings, posters, a wide range of caricature and cartoon art, and architectural and engineering drawings.
Ms. Curtis in the Prints and Photographs Division and the editor contributed to this article. All photos by Ansel Adams, 1943.