Item
Still Image

Farmer in Woodland

Title
Farmer in Woodland
Description
As with language, the U.S. government attempted to control public perception through imagery. The government hired professional photographers to document the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans but gave them strict orders: they were not to show barbed wire, armed military personnel, the camps‚' squalid conditions, or anything that could negatively affect the public‚'s view of the camps. Dorothea Lange was one of the photographers hired to document the plight of Japanese American residents as they left their homes in California. Here, she captured the weight of forced removal and incarceration on a tenant farmer, who had tidied everything and neatly packed for the next day‚'s expulsion. Just before the trains pulled out of town, Lange suffered a nervous breakdown. ‚"I went down to the lobby to type a letter,‚" wrote her assistant, Christina Gardner. ‚"When I came back, she was just in a paroxysm of worry about what was going to happen to these people. What was going to happen? Our government was doing this. She saw the greater fabric in a way very few people did at the time.‚" Photograph by Dorothea Lange, Woodland, California, May 20, 1942. National Archives 537759.
Type
Image
Identifier
AIAA-A.36
Subject
Othering
Rights Holder
National Archives
Rights
Public Domain
Creator
Dorothea Lange
Date
20-May-42
Spatial Coverage
California : Woodland