Leonard Frank “Leaving Vancouver, 1942” Eastwood Collection, Japanese Canadian National Museum.
Japanese American National Museum / Two Views: Photographs by Ansel Adams and Leonard Frank / Feb. 28 – April 24
This exhibition presents a compelling collection of documentary images by two renowned 20th-century photographers, who captured distinctive views of the Japanese American and Japanese Canadian incarcerations.
The exhibition features 40 photographs taken by Ansel Adams at the Manzanar War Relocation Center in 1943 and 26 prints by Leonard Frank recording the forced relocation process in British Columbia in 1942.
Together, the images provide an opportunity to reflect on the nature of forced separation and uprooting and the effects they have on their victims.
Ansel Adams (1902–1984) is well known as a landscape photographer who captured the American West in masterful images that blend drama and contemplation.
From 1943 to 1944, angered by what he heard about the American government’s policy towards citizens of Japanese descent, Adams made a number of trips to Manzanar War Relocation Center.
His powerful photographs captured the harsh daily life and resilience of the 10,000 Japanese Americans incarcerated there during World War II.
When he offered the collection to the Library of Congress, Adams wrote, “The purpose of my work was to show how these people, suffering under a great injustice, and loss of property, businesses and professions, had overcome the sense of defeat and despair by building for themselves a vital community in an arid (but magnificent) environment.”
Born in Berne, Germany, Leonard Frank (1870–1944) moved to Vancouver in 1917 and quickly became the leading commercial/industrial photographer in the city.
His body of work captures the growth of industries in Vancouver and British Columbia between the world wars. In 1942, Frank was hired by the BC Security Commission to document the removal of Canadians of Japanese descent from the coast of British Columbia.
He visited temporary holding areas as well as several camps in the interior of BC. The resulting photographs, which tend to focus on buildings and structures rather than individual people, are both stark and shocking, depicting the movement of humans within bureaucratic systems.
Upcoming Events
Sunday, Feb. 28, 2:00 pm
Film Screening—Copyright: Leonard Frank and The War Between Us Copyright: Leonard Frank tells the story of the great Canadian photographer, who emigrated from Germany at the age of 22. After winning a camera in a lottery, he spent the next 50 years taking pictures of everyday life, landscapes, and industry in British Columbia, becoming renowned as one of the defining photographers of Western Canada.
Set in British Columbia shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, The War Between Us tells the story of the Kawashima family, who are forcibly taken away from their home and business and sent to a mining camp deep in the country’s interior. Free with museum admission.
Saturday, April 9, 2:00 pm
Lecture: Two Views: Photographs by Ansel Adams and Leonard Frank
Bill Jeffries and Grace Eiko Thomson, co-curators of Two Views, will discuss their exhibition. Free with museum admission.
