Then They Came For Me
Imprisoned in America
The most addictive turn-ons aren’t always the most obvious. Black lace lingerie may do it for some people, but for other people, a white button-down shirt is more likely to get their pulse racing. With photography, as with any fine art or sex position, the most provocative pictures aren’t always the nudes, the pretty portraits, or even overtly sexy spreads. The work that gets stuck in your skull, the work you can’t seem to shake – sometimes it’s rough. Sometimes – as in this case – it’s just plain wrong.
We get it. There’s no standard position on what’s provocative, and you know what? That’s the way we like it, and that’s why we’re into the show at the International Center of Photography Museum in New York, Then They Came for Me: Incarceration of Japanese Americans During WWII, which closes on May 6. The show goes against the norm, against the grain of what’s taught in American history books, and against the belligerent nationalism of the American antagonists responsible for such blatant racism and xenophobia.
During the Second World War, the U.S. government disregarded due process and its own Constitution when it incarcerated 120,000 legal residents of Japanese ancestry. President Franklin D. Roosevelt accomplished this via Executive Order 9066, signed by on February 19, 1942. The exhibition at ICP features works by Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, and others who documented the brutal eviction of innocent Japanese Americans, including photographs by Toyo Miyatake, who was incarcerated, himself.
The show calls America’s darling – FDR – on his bullshit and shows a side of America that its society and government conveniently keep under the proverbial rug like a secret lover’s panties.
With that, we declare today “laundry day”; we’ve never been so relieved to see something get wet.
