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I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survuve, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these worlds appear--
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away (Shelley).
The Egyptian pharaoh Ozymandias built monuments to enshrine his greatness to the world. Unfortunately, Ozymandias's world collapsed and was brought to ruin through time and pride. The United States, like the nation that Ozymandias ruled over, can lay claim to the boast of being the most powerful nation on Earth. However, it is not exempt from destruction, and has come dangerously close to beginning down that very same path. The internment and unconstitutional disregard of the human rights of American born Japanese during WWII bore undcanny resemblance to the actions of one of the very nations that the United States fought to protect the world from. During this time period, the constitutional rights of many Japanese-Americans became lost amidst the furor of war hysteria. Chaos threatened to overwhelm the western United States. The path of chaos leads down the road of despair and anarchy, the very forces that destroy nations and tears down empires. The nation avoided this path by recognizing the evil of the camps and attempting to pay restitution. Whether the restitution paid by the U.S. government adequately covered the los of livelihood is an argument for another time. Suffice it to say that the government has at least recognized the innate wrongness of its previous actions and attempted to correct the mistake. The pictures of Dorothea Lange shown in Executive Order 9066: The Internment of 110,000 Japanese Americans (Conrat) serve as ever Vigilant reminders that the United States came perilously close to destroying itself, and those pictures remain as silent sentries, guarding the night against the forces of chaos and arnarchy. The breadth and magnitude of the Japanese-American experience was swept into the swirling tempest of political storm captured in the images by Dorothea Lange.
Who exactly is Dorothea Lange, and why did she photograph the internment? Dorothea Lange photographed calamity and devastation, but most importantly, she photographed people. Unwilling to bother herself with photography as art, she turned to photography as a means to effect public interest and to impact public apath. In a sense, Dorothea Lange worked politics through the burgeoning art of photography. She photographed the internment camps in hopes "that once people saw what was happening, the internment would stop" (America's Library). So insightful was her knowledge of the human condition that N.Y. Times critic A.D. Coleman referred to Langes' photograpsh as "documents of such a high order that they convey the feelings of the victims as well as the facts of the crime" (qtd. Museum). The fact that "many of Lange's photographs were censored by the federal government, itself conflicted by the existence of teh camps" (Library) clearly illustrates how closely Dorothea Lange was able to capture the grim reality of camp life.
This photo clearly illustrates the fact that all facets of Japanese-American society are captured, and like a dragonfly in amber, frozen forever in time. From the elderly to the young. Additionally, the dehumanization of the interned through the use of identification tags, glares brightly like a beacon. Lange captures the essence of Japanese pride in the defiant scowl of the grandfather figure. The counterpart of the proud grandfather is the two young children. Neither child appears to understand the actions transpiring around them. The young boy in front wrings his hands, staring forward with a blank look upon his face. The boy in the back has a slight confused grin. In any case, the reality of internment has not sunk into the mids of the two children. Photo one serves as a fantastic glimpse into the psyche of the old and young early in the internment process.
In this photo, Lange attempts to bridge the gulf between America at large and Japanese-America. Standing boldly in the forefront, two Japanese-American girls with hands placed over their hearts ostensibly pledge allegiance to America. Intense concentration furrows the brows of the girlon the left while over=whelming enthusiasm spills forth from the girld on the left (Executive Order p 32). Clearly this photograph is meant to show the public that Japanese-American children are patriotic. further study reveals that the children behind the two girls are of all races. This is likely being used to evoke the feeling of brotherhood, perhaps a subtle allusion and reminder to the great melting pot of American society. Photo two invokes feelings of patriotism through the intensity of emotion displayed by the two girls.
Finally, this photo is a powerful statement to the American people, and to the American government that the Japanese-Americans are Americans. The picture depicts a common downtown street corner. The picture could be of any street corner in any American town. The bold contrasts in black and white clearly draw attention to the sign in large print hanging on the storefront stating, "I AM AN AMERICAN" (Executive Order p. 51). Japanese Kanji (a type of written Japanese) decorates a post on the street. The photo is meant to give the viewer a sense of Japanese-American cross culture, while at the same time forcing the idea that Japanese-Americans are Americans down the throat of the viewer. The look of the photo is very natural and the Kanji does not seem out of place in the Americana setting.
The sands of time are blown away by the winds of change. What fails to evolve, becomes extinct. Perhaps man, too, can go the way of teh dodo; most definitely, the United States can become victim of pride and short sightedness and go the way of Ozymandias, lost in the shadows of time and leaving but the scarcest trace that it ever existed to begin with.
For more photographs by Dorothea Lange, click HERE
