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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Thirty: When walls speak and we listen > Visitors Center, Manzanar National Historic Site, California, 2007
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24-FEB-2007

Visitors Center, Manzanar National Historic Site, California, 2007

In 1942, the great documentary photographer Dorthea Lange made an image of a tattered flag flying over the relocation center were 11,000 Japanese-Americans were forcibly interned during World War II. Today, that image has been made into an enormous mural, and it bears the names of all of those who suffered here. It stands in the great hall of the US National Park Service's Visitor Center. I moved in to remove other exhibits from the fame, used a camera with a 28mm wideangle lens to embrace as much of the display as I could. Since the photomural and names are black and white, I converted the image itself to black and white as well, a medium that offers a good sense of the era. It is a wall that speaks volumes about an embarrassing chapter in American history.

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Phil Douglis02-May-2007 18:04
Glad this image brings such thoughts as these to mind, Ceci. Your words remind me of the film "Letters from Iwo Jima" which is, at its heart, a powerful anti-war statement, with much of it devoted to telling the very story you tell here. We are indeed all the same. And that is why Manzanar carries such pain.
Guest 02-May-2007 17:35
As the daughter of a Navy pilot who spent part of WWII in the Pacific on the aircraft carrier USS Cabot battling the Japanese, I've had to do a lot of hard thinking about the nature of warfare and the military, and about the terrible humiliation suffered by Japan not only as they lost the war, but also about this excrutiating part of our own history, on our own soil. Many excellent films have illuminated their ordeal, just as this stately photo does. Thank you for including it in this gallery, Phil! It is powerfully educational and worthy of attention.
I recall a scene from a movie during which a Navy ship was picking up oil-drenched Japanese survivors from the water, where an American sailor exclaims in astonishment: "They're just like us!" The war machine always has to work overtime to make the "enemy" loom like monsters in the minds of its soldiers. I think it's time to dispense with the propaganda of "us vs. them", and recognize that indeed, we are very much "the same." And try to find ways to coexist before we blow one another to bits.
Phil Douglis18-Mar-2007 18:24
Thanks, Jenene -- you should visit. Tim and I have been twice. Tim is going back there at the end of April to attend the reunion of internees. It should be very moving. It was my intention to honor the memory of those who were unjustly detained here, just as Dorthea Lange does with the symbol of the tattered flag flying over the camp, and just as the National Park Service does in superimposing the names of all the internees upon that tattered flag. I hope that my image can help others become aware of this dark chapter in American history, perhaps for the first time.
JSWaters18-Mar-2007 03:06
It's an especially orderly and dignified interpretation of two artist's work. I often think back to two dear friends of my parents who, as Japanese Americans, were forcibly taken with their families to internment camps. They bore this burden with such palpable dignity, filing the ugly episode into some unknown (to me) drawer intent on not allowing it to define who they were. I need to visit this place.
Jenene
Phil Douglis03-Mar-2007 20:42
That is why I don't feel any guilt photographing the art of others, Tim. I always try to bring my own interpretation to it. As we know, art is an expression of ideas that should stimulate the imaginations of viewers. Lange did it in her image, and certainly the museum designer did it with this imposing one story high series of memorial panels. And I tried to do it with this black and white wideangle rendering of that combination of artistic concepts.
Tim May03-Mar-2007 19:12
I like how you have taken the art of at least two other people and made your own artistic statement here - Dorthea Lange and the designer of the museum display had their visions, while you have added your own.
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