Minidoka: Fabric of the Land

[jkcampbell2]

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On 6/11/2020 at 10:50 AM, adan said:

Very, very, very well-done, Tim!

An evocative handling of a disturbing chapter in our history. Should be published - but from your background I'd guess that 1) you already know that and 2) know how to get it done.

Eight years ago, after the newspaper folded and I was working at a suburban Denver camera store, one of the customers was a Japanese-American woman in her late 70s. She had brought in some family snapshots from the 1940s for restoration. They showed her as a child, and her family, and I realized from the background buildings that  she had been in such a camp. 

I asked her if it was Manzanar (the most famous camp, thanks to Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange), and she told me, No, that it was right here in Colorado. The Granada Relocation Center (a.k.a Camp Amache) on the Great Plains.

Since 2012 was the 70th anniversary of the creation of these concentration camps, I immediately tracked it down for an essay in ColoradoSeen. It proved to be a different challenge that required a slightly different "symbolic" approach, since there were virtually no remaining buildings, and I never saw any other visitors - it is very remote.

It is the closing story (pp. 36-53) of this 2012 issue. Just an additional take on this too-often-forgotten story.

M9 B&W conversions, 75 Summilux and 21 Elmarit.

https://issuu.com/coloradoseen/docs/cs_02_2012

 

Thanks for sharing the link. Not diminish the value of viewing all the diverse images users post here it's nice to see a complete essay professionally presented. A well told story in pictures Andy. Cheers, jc

Edited June 14, 2020 by jkcampbell2

[jkcampbell2]

On 6/11/2020 at 9:28 AM, Likaleica said:

Like everyone here, I've been enjoying my M10 Monochrom for the past several months.  I found it the perfect tool for a photo essay I've been working on.  Idaho is one of the places where the US government built concentration camps for Japanese Americans during World War II.  120,000 American citizens were rounded up over a 2-week period in 1942.  They had to leave everything behind except what they could carry.  Many lost their homes, farms and businesses.  They were shipped to Assembly Centers, which usually were racetracks or fairgrounds, where they were put in horse stalls for a few months while they government built the camps in uninhabited, desolate, remote, harsh regions of the country.  They spent 3 years in these camps, and the remnants of one of them is in Idaho, located in a broad high mountain desert the Shoshone Indians called "Minidoka."

What struck me most about Minidoka was not the few remaining buildings in fairly good shape at the site, which now is a National Historic Site.  But rather, the remnants of these buildings scattered throughout the farms and towns in the area.  You don't notice them at first because they have blended into the fabric of the land, but if you keep a keen eye as you're driving down a country road, you will see the unmistakable shape of the barracks in a barn or a shed or a house.  

The M10 was perfect for this because its high ISO capability allowed me to hand hold the camera with a pinhole, which allowed the metaphors of this project to be expressed.  To me, the pinhole rendered images that were appropriate to the project for two reasons.  This happened 78 years ago, and the survivors of the camps have an indistinct memory of those times.  I felt that the indistinct images rendered by the pinhole are a metaphor for their memory.  The indistinct images also represent the country's indistinct memory of this past sin, one which it probably would just as soon forget.  The pinhole also created interesting optical patterns on the sensor from sun flare.

And the decaying buildings, many of them propped up by boards that look like canes, are a metaphor for the aging occupants of these buildings so long ago.

The first image is a barracks that housed 6 families.  Each family, including grandparents (Issei), parents (Nissei) and grandchildren (Sansei) were placed in a single 20x20 foot room with army cots.  No other furniture. They had to build chairs and tables from scrap wood in the camp.  The buildings were made of green wood and clad with tar paper, no insulation.  The desert gets down to -30 Fahrenheit in the winter and above 100 in the summer.  Wind howled through the buildings. This building at the Historic Site has had more siding added to it after the tar paper rotted off, but it is not an accurate representation of how they lived.

This group of visitors appeared like an apparition of those souls who had lived here 8 decades earlier.

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Great images! I too am a big fan of pinhole photography. Thanks for sharing the images and your thoughts on how you approached the project from a visual stance. Cheers, jc

[Likaleica]

3 hours ago, jkcampbell2 said:

Great images! I too am a big fan of pinhole photography. Thanks for sharing the images and your thoughts on how you approached the project from a visual stance. Cheers, jc

Thanks

[onasj]

Absolutely brilliant, Tim.  The use of the pinhole lens is inspired.

[Likaleica]

On 6/11/2020 at 9:19 AM, Herr Barnack said:

@Tim,

This is a haunting and beautiful series of photographs and a significant body of work.  It brings to mind faded memories of a dark chapter in our nation's history.

Your use of a pinhole lens was spot on - this was an excellent choice. 

Thank you for sharing these images with us.  I hope you will publish them in book form sometime soon.

H/B

 

On 6/11/2020 at 9:50 AM, adan said:

Very, very, very well-done, Tim!

An evocative handling of a disturbing chapter in our history. Should be published - but from your background I'd guess that 1) you already know that and 2) know how to get it done.

Eight years ago, after the newspaper folded and I was working at a suburban Denver camera store, one of the customers was a Japanese-American woman in her late 70s. She had brought in some family snapshots from the 1940s for restoration. They showed her as a child, and her family, and I realized from the background buildings that  she had been in such a camp. 

I asked her if it was Manzanar (the most famous camp, thanks to Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange), and she told me, No, that it was right here in Colorado. The Granada Relocation Center (a.k.a Camp Amache) on the Great Plains.

Since 2012 was the 70th anniversary of the creation of these concentration camps, I immediately tracked it down for an essay in ColoradoSeen. It proved to be a different challenge that required a slightly different "symbolic" approach, since there were virtually no remaining buildings, and I never saw any other visitors - it is very remote.

It is the closing story (pp. 36-53) of this 2012 issue. Just an additional take on this too-often-forgotten story.

M9 B&W conversions, 75 Summilux and 21 Elmarit.

https://issuu.com/coloradoseen/docs/cs_02_2012

 

Thank you.

[Likaleica]

On 6/13/2020 at 9:14 PM, jkcampbell2 said:

Great images! I too am a big fan of pinhole photography. Thanks for sharing the images and your thoughts on how you approached the project from a visual stance. Cheers, jc

Thank you

[Likaleica]

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1 hour ago, onasj said:

Absolutely brilliant, Tim.  The use of the pinhole lens is inspired.

Thanks, David

[Likaleica]

For anyone who is interested I just made a Blurb book of this project.  

https://www.blurb.com/b/10186680-minidoka

128 pages, some Haiku, and captions at the end.  The nice thing about Blurb is that it is easy to make a book and you can make as few as 1...

The problem with Blurb is that they are very expensive.  This one is $74.95.  For what it's worth I will be donating part of any proceeds to the non-profit, Friends of Minidoka.

[onasj]

From the extensive preview of Tim’s book at the link he provided, the photos, the occasional haiku, the minimalist styling and the social statement are all stunning. Bravo, Tim!

[Likaleica]

3 hours ago, onasj said:

From the extensive preview of Tim’s book at the link he provided, the photos, the occasional haiku, the minimalist styling and the social statement are all stunning. Bravo, Tim!

Thank you, David.  Very kind.  The project preoccupied me for 5 months.

[rpittal]

these are fantastic and haunting... I have spent a lot of time at Manzanar, but never have seen it like these. I keep coming back to them, so just bought your book!

[Likaleica]

36 minutes ago, rpittal said:

these are fantastic and haunting... I have spent a lot of time at Manzanar, but never have seen it like these. I keep coming back to them, so just bought your book!

Wow!  Thank you very much, Bob.  I hope you enjoy it.

[onasj]

When I revisited the link today this 30% discount code appeared, supposedly good only for today: JUNEFLASH3RT

[pietchen]

 

Thank you for the historical clarification. We have never heard of such a history here in Germany. The implementation of the story in the pictures has been solved for me grandly.
I put pictures of my grandpa in wartime in the Russian campaign in a book, a similar impression of the pictures and thus a very deep work for me.
Best thanks for that

[Likaleica]

On 6/29/2020 at 5:37 AM, pietchen said:

 

Thank you for the historical clarification. We have never heard of such a history here in Germany. The implementation of the story in the pictures has been solved for me grandly.
I put pictures of my grandpa in wartime in the Russian campaign in a book, a similar impression of the pictures and thus a very deep work for me.
Best thanks for that

Thank you, Peter.  Your book on your grandfather sounds very interesting.

[Likaleica]

The Washington Post published my photo essay to day in their In Sight section.  

https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/2020/08/07/these-haunting-photos-japanese-internment-camp-are-reminder-the-terrible-costs-war/

[250swb]

Well done, a great photo essay!

[Likaleica]

7 hours ago, 250swb said:

Well done, a great photo essay!

Thanks, Steve.  I see your first photo on your flickr page - the one of the fence - looks eerily like the fence at Minidoka.

[250swb]

2 hours ago, Likaleica said:

Thanks, Steve.  I see your first photo on your flickr page - the one of the fence - looks eerily like the fence at Minidoka.

That's an interesting observation. I photograph that fence maybe once or twice a year, and it's been going on many years. But only after deciding to move back more towards 35mm film, and also use pinhole plus my Holga to avoid any obsession with detail, did I make an image of the fence I enjoyed. It's the boundary fence to an old government ammunition and testing facility, and though I'd photographed there before was looking for a visual 'way in' to the project which I think the Holga helps with.

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Hallo,

Look here: Interesting Leica gear

[fotografr]

On 6/11/2020 at 9:36 AM, Likaleica said:

Josh and his wife Angel, neither of whom had any connection to the camp, visit the site several times a year.  They brought their children to teach them about the true meaning of liberty, and what can go wrong in a society dedicated to that liberty when fear and hatred take over.

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You mean, like what we're living through now in the USA?

Very nice series. Thought provoking.

Edited August 10, 2020 by fotografr