A review by liralen
Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment by Linda Gordon
4.0
Dorothea Lange is best known for her Depression-era photographs, but during World War II she was focused on a project that was in many ways more critical: photographing the internment of Japanese Americans (citizens and noncitizens both) in camps. She was working for the federal government, but only some of the government wanted her there—other parts of the government threw every road block they could manufacture in her path. Most of the photos weren't published at the time.
The book is split into a few sections, starting with some commentary and background on Lange's work and ending with her photographs, from pre-internment to internment itself. The commentary is so helpful, because the captions (which I believe are original to the time period) toe the line in many ways...the commentary notes that Lange was very sympathetic to the people interned, but the captions are so bland as to be positive because she was limited by what the government wanted and was willing to publish.
The book is wonderfully done, and it makes me so angry that this sort of thing made sense to the government...and that it hasn't been the end of it. The photos of interned women working on nets for the army, while incarcerated as potential enemies of the state...god. Or the fact that they had to stuff their own mattresses, or were housed in horse barns, or that they didn't have adequate medical care, or that their incarceration was described as 'evacuation'...oh, I've studied internment camps in classes before, and most of this isn't new to me, but it's infuriating nonetheless.
I might have preferred more text woven in with the photos (and perhaps larger copies of the photos, if that would have been possible?), but this was pretty excellent. Seems fitting for this day and age.
The book is split into a few sections, starting with some commentary and background on Lange's work and ending with her photographs, from pre-internment to internment itself. The commentary is so helpful, because the captions (which I believe are original to the time period) toe the line in many ways...the commentary notes that Lange was very sympathetic to the people interned, but the captions are so bland as to be positive because she was limited by what the government wanted and was willing to publish.
The book is wonderfully done, and it makes me so angry that this sort of thing made sense to the government...and that it hasn't been the end of it. The photos of interned women working on nets for the army, while incarcerated as potential enemies of the state...god. Or the fact that they had to stuff their own mattresses, or were housed in horse barns, or that they didn't have adequate medical care, or that their incarceration was described as 'evacuation'...oh, I've studied internment camps in classes before, and most of this isn't new to me, but it's infuriating nonetheless.
I might have preferred more text woven in with the photos (and perhaps larger copies of the photos, if that would have been possible?), but this was pretty excellent. Seems fitting for this day and age.