StoryCulture

Impounded - The Photographs of Dorothea Lange Documenting the Japanese Internment That Began in 1942

Japanese Owned Grocery Store -- Oakland, California -- March 30, 1942 -- Two Days Before the Notices Appeared

Photo by Dorothea Lange.

THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SUPPRESSED MOST OF THE PHOTOGRAPHS DOROTHEA LANGE WAS HIRED TO TAKE DURING WWII. 97% OF THE IMAGES DOROTHEA LANGE TOOK DURING THE JAPANESE INTERNMENT IN CALIFORNIA WERE NEVER PUBLISHED.

The Enemy

Photo by Dorothea Lange 1942.

WESTERN DEFENSE COMMAND AND FOURTH ARMY WARTIME CIVIL CONTROL ADMINISTRATION
Presidio of San Francisco, California
April 1, 1942
INSTRUCTIONS TO ALL PERSONS OF JAPANESE ANCESTRY
The notice read in part:
"All Japanese persons, both alien and non-alien, will be evacuated from the above designated area by 12:00 o’clock noon Tuesday, April 7, 1942." A link to the full text is embedded above.

Photo by Dorothea Lange.

2. Evacuees must carry with them on departure for the Reception Center, the following property:
a. Bedding and linens (no mattress) for each member of the family.
b. Toilet articles for each member of the family.
c. Extra clothing for each member of the family.
d. Sufficient knives, forks, spoons, plates, bowls and cups for each member of the family.
e. Essential personal effects for each member of the family.
All items carried will be securely packaged, tied and plainly marked with the name of the owner and numbered in accordance with instructions received at the Civil Control Station.
The size and number of packages is limited to that which can be carried by the individual or family group.

Impounded by Dorthea Lange. Edited by Linda Gordon and Gary Y. Okihiro
Click here to read the New York Times review of Impounded. Much more than a review -- worth reading because the article bares the facts about a shameful time in American History

-- Book review from Publishers Weekly:
"When America's War Relocation Authority hired Dorothea Lange to photograph the internment of Japanese-Americans in 1942, they put a few restrictions on her work. Barbed wire, watchtowers and armed soldiers were off limits, they declared. And no pictures of resistance, either. They wanted the roundup and sequestering of Japanese-Americans documented—but not too well. Working within these limits, Lange, who is best known for her photographs of migrant farmers during the Depression, nonetheless produced images whose content so opposed the federal objective of demonizing Japanese-Americans that the vast majority of the photographs were suppressed throughout WWII (97% of them have never been published at all). Editors Gordon and Okihiro set this first collection of Lange's internment work within technical, cultural and historical contexts. Gordon (The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction) discusses Lange's professional methods and the formation of her "democratic-populist" beliefs. Okihiro (Whispered Silences: Japanese Americans and World War II) traces the history of prejudice against Japanese Americans, with emphasis on internees' firsthand accounts. But the bulk of the book is given over to Lange's photographs. Several of these are as powerful as her most stirring work, and the final image—of a grandfather in the desolate Manzanar Center looking down in anguish at the grandson between his knees—is worth the price of the book alone."

4. Each family, and individual living alone, will be furnished transportation to the Reception Center. Private means of transportation will not be utilized. All instructions pertaining to the movement will be obtained at the Civil Control Station.
By the order of: J. L. DeWITT -- Lieutenant General -- U. S. Army -- Commanding

Tagged Girl 1942

Photo by Dorothea Lange.

Read about the internment of San Francisco's Japanese citizen's at The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco.
Click here to read their piece specifically about Dorothea Lange during the Japanese Internment.

San Francisco Evacuation, Tanforan Assembly Center and Manzanar Relocation Center Photographs

Learn more by visiting the Manzanar National Historic Site.

Many of Dorothea Lange's photographs are available for online viewing at The Oakland Museum of California

I found The National Archives list of more than 1,300 Dorothea Lange photos online here. Digital images of Lange's prints are available from that link.

Dorothea Lange - Iconic Great Depression Era Photojournalism

Ironically, I discovered a timeless sisterhood and inspiration in Dorothea Lange's struggle to balance marriage, motherhood, and art through my interest in the paintings of Maynard Dixon, her first husband.

In Escape to Reality: The Western World of Maynard Dixon, the final thirty pages are about Dorothea Lange. That section of the book, by Deborah Brown Raisel, is titled: The Give and Take in a Marriage of Aesthetics. Raisel details Lange's evolution from a studio portrait photographer, to full time motherhood, to a passionate street photographer. Dorothea Lange met the 45 year old Maynard Dixon when she was 24. He was already an established artist. They were married from 1920 until 1935.

In a 1931 expedition to Taos, New Mexico with Dixon, writes Deborah Brown Raisel, "Lange no longer had the benefit of working side by side with her husband, photographing as he painted. Instead Lange was intent on, 'keeping everything smooth and being happy and making it an enjoyable time and taking care of three children. I baked and cooked and you know when there's deep snow on the ground your'e kept busy. The gloves, the galoshes, the wet clothes--you put them on and you take them off.'"

Photo by Dorothea Lange. © The Dorothea Lange Collection.
The Oakland Museum of California

Juggling Maynard Dixon's expectation that his wife ought handle all domestic responsibilities, and her growing passion for photography was increasingly difficult for Dorothea Lange. Later in Escape to Reality, Deborah Brown Raisel sums up a 1932 interview in the San Francisco Daily News, "Lange then described in some detail what she did to allow her artist husband to remain properly unencumbered. Household chores were done in the morning before she left for her studio, including planning the children's schedules, planning the meals, and ordering the food. After a full day at work she would prepare the meal, clean the kitchen, and devote the rest of the evening to the children. 'Maynard,' she said, 'divided his evening between the children and more work.'"

Maynard Dixon at his Easel. Photo Dorothea Lange 1920.
© The Dorothea Lange Collection. The Oakland Museum of California.

On that 1931 visit to Taos, Dorothea observed photographer Paul Strand who drove past her house. "It was the first time I had observed a person in my own trade who took his work that way. He had private purposes he was pursuing, and he was so methodical and so intent on it that he looked neither to the right or to the left. He went down that road and he came back at night." Raisel observes, "It was about the opportunity for someone in Lange's field to follow his passion. And as she watched from the little adobe house filled with children, filled with "women's work" filled with endless responsibilities... ' That thing that Paul Strand was able to do, I wasn't able to do. Women rarely can, unless they're not living a woman's life... At any rate, I didn't have the chance. I photographed once and a while when I could, but just a little.'" Dixon and Lange's independent artistic needs eventually ended the marriage.

Native American Woman With Children 1923-1931
Photo by Dorothea Lange
© Dorothea Lange Collection. The Oakland Museum of California.

Dorothea Lange met Paul S. Taylor at her first street photography show at the Brockhurst Gallery. Strand and Lange connected philosophically. They embarked on a project interviewing migratory labororers who were streaming into California in the wake of the dust bowl.

Migrant Mother

The image was made using a Graflex camera. The original negative is 4x5" film. Link to this Dorothea Lange photograph at the Library of Congress.

"I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean- to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it." -- Dorothea Lange (From: Popular Photography, Feb. 1960).

Photo of Dorothea Lange by her second husband Paul S. Taylor, 1934.
© The Dorothea Lange Collection. The Oakland Museum of California.

According to the Oakland Museum of California, "Collaborating with her second husband, labor economist Paul Schuster Taylor, she documented the troubled exodus of farm families escaping the dust bowl as they migrated West in search of work. Lange's documentary style achieved its fullest expression in these year, with photographs such as "Migrant Mother" becoming instantly recognized symbols of the migrant experience. Coupled with Taylor's essays and captions, her photographs were hailed as persuasive evidence of the urgent need for government programs to assist disadvantaged Americans."

Dorothea Lange Photographs

Dorothea Lange died in 1965. The following year her unique collection became a gift to the Oakland Museum of California from her husband, Paul Schuster Taylor. The collection includes Lange's personal negative file of more than 25,000 images, over 6000 vintage prints, and a selection from Lange's personal papers and library. Click here for the link to their online archive.