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Ansel Adams: Born Free and Equal
Shown at the Documentary Arts Asia Gallery in October 2012.
“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…” – Adams
During WWII, Japanese Americans were singled out for evacuation. More than 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry were forcibly removed from their homes, businesses, and possessions and placed into relocation camps. Manzanar War Relocation Center was one of ten camps, and the subject of Adams’s documentation.
“The internment of Japanese Americans struck a chord with Adams when Harry Oye, his parents’ longtime employee and 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 leapt at an opportunity to photograph Japanese-American internees at the Manzanar War Relocation Center, which was run by his friend and fellow Sierra Club member Ralph Merritt.” – Library of Congress
Documentary Arts Asia is honored to be able to exhibit these images of Manzanar at our Chiang Mai Gallery. Please join us on Friday, October 5th for a night of conversation, reflection and images captured by a ledgend in photography.
Ansel Adams, Photographer, Conservationist
“At one with the power of the American landscape, and renowned for the patient skill and timeless beauty of his work, photographer Ansel Adams has been a visionary in his efforts to preserve this country’s wild and scenic areas, both on film and on Earth. Drawn to the beauty of nature’s monuments, he is regarded by environmentalists as a monument himself, and by photographers as a national institution. It is through his foresight and fortitude that so much of America has been saved for future Americans.”President James E. Carter – Presenting Ansel Adams with the Presidential Medal of Freedom