Mt. Williamson from Manzanar
Original Photograph Negative: 1944
Artist: Ansel Adams
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In 1943, Ansel Adams took on what is remembered as one of the greatest documentary achievements of his career. Ralph Merrit, a friend from the Sierra Club and the director of the Manzanar Relocation Center, urged Adams to document the Japanese-Americans interned there in the Owens Valley of the Eastern Sierra. In his writing and speeches, when discussing the Manzanar project, Ansel spoke movingly about the beauty of the landscape and his deep sympathy for the people who were imprisoned there: ‘I have believed that the setting of this camp, no matter how desolate the immediate desert surround, was a strengthening inspiration to the people.’ (E pg. 65) Adams took hundreds of photographs there between 1943 and 1944, a photographic project he considered ‘the most important job I have done this year.’ (LAA pg. 160) On one of his visits, he drove to a spot behind Manzanar overlooking a field of boulders and made this photograph. ‘There was a glorious storm going on in the mountains,’ Adams wrote, and ‘I set up my camera on the rooftop platform om my car [which] enabled me to a get a good view over the boulders to the base of the range.’ (E pg. 68) This image would find its way into numerous publications and exhibitions throughout the artists lifetime, and was also included in Ansel's last major project called 'The Museum Set,' a collection of photographs for which he wanted to be remembered. Sets were initially meant to include either 25 or 75 total images, 10 which Ansel picked as absolute and which he considered exemplary to his body of work (colloquially referred to as his 'biggies'). Of all the images considered for the set made throughout the entirety of his career, Mount Williamson was chosen as one of his ten 'biggies.'
Towards the northern edge of California’s Mojave desert, nestled between the Inyo National Forest and the sands of Death Valley, lies a strip of land that was once home to the Owens Valley Paiute peoples.
Adams did not enlist during World War II, but he very much wanted to make some patriotic contribution. Ralph Merritt, a Sierra Club friend and the director of the Manzanar Relocation Center, urged Adams to document the Japanese Americans interned at the center in Manzanar, California. Adams made hundreds of photographs there between 1943 and 1944.
Born Free and Equal: The Story of Loyal Japanese-Americans is a book by Ansel Adams containing photographs from the internment camp then named Manzanar War Relocation Center in Owens Valley, Inyo County, California. The book was published in 1944 by U.S. Camera in New York.
In 1943 and 1944, Ansel Adams documented one of the darkest chapters in American history, shooting a series of photographs of Japanese-American citizens in incarceration.
