Perceiving and resisting : the negotiations of art and photography at the Tanforan Assembly Center
Date
2012
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
This paper analyses the ways that art and photography shaped the life at and the perception of Tanforan Assembly Center, one of the locations that held Japanese Americans during their World War II internment. Though the assembly centers are frequently overlooked in internment scholarship due to the relatively brief period they were in operation, in actuality they were areas in which the Japanese American internees developed vital methods of community and systems of resistance which allowed them to remain actively engaged with their surroundings, even as prisoners. At Tanforan, this community and resistance developed through the practice and production of art. To articulate this reasoning, this paper analyzes the artistic production in three separate categories: the War Relocation Authority photography of Dorothea Lange; the development of the Tanforan Art School; and the artistic output of two professional painters interned at Tanforan, Hisako Hibi and Miné Okubo. The paper finds that while the photographic output of the camps lacked nuance due to the constraints of government regulations and the limited viewpoint of the photographer, the artwork provides a powerful account of the life of internees at Tanforan. The Tanforan Art School acted as mediator between the government agenda and the internee community, facilitating the production of such critical artwork while skillfully negotiating a place for itself within the camp's system of control.