In 1943, the landscape photographer Ansel Adams traveled to the base of the Sierra Nevada to photograph Manzanar—one of the ten internment camps that together detained 120,000 Japanese Americans during the Second World War. Invited by the camp director to document life there in an effort to jolt waning wartime morale, and forbidden from photographing the stifling militarism of the camp’s infrastructure, Adams trained his lens on the resilience of its citizens.
An American Landscape
In 1943, Ansel Adams traveled to photograph Manzanar—one of the ten internment camps that together detained 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II.