50

Ansel Adams

1902-1984

Manzanar Relocation Center, Inyo County, California (Manzanar from Guard Tower). 1943.

Silver print
With Adams' signature in pencil on mount recto, and his signature, partial title, and notation 3-M-4" in ink on mount verso.
The image 9 5/8 x 13 1/4 in. (24.4 x 33.7 cm.), the Crescent Board mount 13 7/8 x 18 in. (35.2 x 45.7 cm.)

  • Provenance:
    An American Collector, Japan; to A Country Called California: The Collection of Stephen White
  • Notes:
    In 1943, Ansel Adams was hired to photograph the Manzanar Relocation Center by his friend and fellow Sierra Club member Ralph Merritt, the camp's director. The camp was home to over 10,000 Japanese-Americans who had been forcibly removed from their homes by the government after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Fear of a Japanese invasion led President Franklin D. Roosevelt to sign Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942. The act designated the West Coast as a military zone from which "any or all persons may be excluded." Although not specified in the order, Japanese-Americans were singled out for evacuation. More than 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry were removed from their homes in California, southern Arizona, and western Washington and Oregon and sent to ten relocation camps. Those forcibly removed from their homes, businesses, and possessions included Japanese immigrants legally forbidden from becoming citizens (Issei), the American-born (Nisei), and children of the American-born (Sansei).

    Adams was staunchly against this incarceration of American citizens, and his photographs focus on the dignity of the camp's residents and their resilience in the face of injustice. The resulting images were exhibited at The Museum of Modern Art and published in the book Born Free and Equal: The Story of Loyal Japanese-Americans in 1944.

    Adams offered his collection of these images to the Library of Congress in 1965 writing: "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 dispair [sic] by building for themselves a vital community in an arid (but magnificent) environment....All in all, I think this Manzanar Collection is an important historical document, and I trust it can be put to good use."
  • Condition: For condition reports, email Deborah Rogal at [email protected]

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February 12, 2026 12:00 PM EST
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