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How is art a form of protest today? The story of Dorothea Lange and the Japanese Internment

  • Feb 22
  • 7 min read

Can art be a form of protest? Does art really work as resistance? And how can you make protest art?


In times like these, it's natural to wonder if art is really important. If writing, music, performance, and other creative work really matters.


I find hope and inspiration from looking at stories of artists using their work to resist the status quo. The story of photographer Dorothea Lange is a powerful example to show the way.


Listen to this story!



She could have just taken the pictures and shut up. She could have just focused on the craft, on the pictures’ compositions, on the framing and processing, and collected her checks.


But taking photographs showed her things she couldn’t unsee. And she wanted to ensure that everyone saw them, in all their dirty, unjust glory.  


How did one woman take pictures so powerful that they were both celebrated and banned? How did a worker with unprecedented access create a living visual library that showed our country’s desperate injustice? And what can we learn from Dorothea Lange and her photos of migrants in the 1930s, and incarcerated Japanese-Americans in the 1940s, about making art as resistance?  

 

PART 1: LOWER EAST SIDE

Dorothea Lange was born in NJ in 1895. She had polio at a young age, which left her with a lifelong limp.


At age 10, her father walked out, and the family had to move in with their immigrant grandmother in the crowded, poor, and rowdy community of Lower East Side in NY.


Dorothea knew early on that she liked photography. She convinced local artists to let her help and learn. And when she moved to San Francisco in 1918, she quickly found work at a photography studio.    


Very soon after that, she found a backer to help her open a portrait studio, and made a good living taking pictures of the wealthy  


Dorothea was thriving, but then she got married to another artist, a painter. Not so different from today: getting married meant she had to prioritize her husband and her kids, and put her own work and passions aside. She chafed at the restrictions, the expectations. But she did it, because that’s what you did (and what we do today as women).

                 

PART 2: THE DUST BOWL

In the 1920s, the fabulously wealthy got more rich, and regular folks trying to get their own piece on the exploding stock market. We associate the decade with opulence, and parties, and bootleg booze.


Then in 1929, it all came crashing down. The stock market collapsed, and wealth disappeared.


For many who had money before, they would rally and continue on.


But for most, who had either lost money in the stock market, or worked for those who did, they lost everything. Factories closed, banks stopped loans,and eventually one in four people would lose their job.


Dorothea and her family struggled – no one was taking portraits anymore. And that struggle revealed all the tensions in the marriage. Eventually, they separated, and Dorothea spent most of the time away from her children so she could work.


But in between clients who had the money to take portraits, she looked through her studio windows and saw destitute, desperate men milling around. She saw misery and fear. And she got her camera.


She took pictures of men lined up for a nearby soup kitchen. Then she moved to makeshift camps for the homeless. She took pictures of battles between the poor and police.


And then she saw how it was spreading.


By the early 1930s, the Great Depression had decimated the work force. But then, changing climate came for more.


Mary Patterson, from the Bill of Rights Institute, described what came to be known as the Dust Bowl, in a 2023 presentation.


After all of her photographic work, Dorothea was eventually employed by a federal agency looking to better understand the impact of the two forces – the depression and dust bowl.  



She took pictures of lines of cars loaded up with a family’s belongings, head to the west. She took pictures of shantytowns and migrant camps.


In 1936, Dorothea visited a pea picker’s camp, and found a mother surrounded by children. Desperate and hungry. She took the picture, and Migrant Mother went on to be one of he best-known photos around the world.

 

PART 3: INTERNMENT

In 1941, as the Nazis were invading and occupying the rest of Europe, the German allies of Japan attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.


The U.S., which had tried to stay out the growing war in Europe, immediately declared war on Japan, then Germany.

For those of us who remember 9/11, we can remember the shock, the fear, of being attacked. And we remember the hysteria: when the U.S. immediately attacked and declared war against the countries supposedly housing Al Queda, people all over the U.S. attacked Muslim citizens and immigrants. There were calls for incarceration, for deportation, for bans.



That all happened in 1941 too. But the government actually went through with it: they decreed that all Japanese-Americans in California and surrounding states be rounded up and incarcerated for the duration of the war.


At the time, in California especially, Japanese-Americans were thriving. They owned businesses and farms, they had nice houses and communities.


And they lost all of it with Executive Order 9066 from Roosevelt. All people of Japanese ancestry, even those born in the U.S., were given 7 days to pack up a suitcase and get on a bus.



116,000 Americans were moved first to assembly centers. Like a Bay Area racetrack, where families were kept in horse stalls.


Then, they were moved to prison camps in the desert. Like Manzanar, in the middle of a bleak desert with mud, sand and dust storms.





Meanwhile, they recruited Japanese American boys from the camps to fight and die in the war for the U.S.


 

Part 4: EVIDENCE

Right when the order was made, the government called on Dorothea. They wanted her to take pictures of the entire process. Getting on the buses, moving to assembly centers, then life in the camps. The idea was: show that this whole thing wasn’t that bad. They weren’t hurting anyone. They were just being cautious.


Right away, the whole thing backfired on the government.


Dorothea was deeply against the order, and saw the hypocrisy – why aren’t we locking up Germans and Italians too, since we’re at war with them? But she took the job so that it would be documented.


Just as she had done with the migrant workers and other communities, Dorothea set out to capture reality. And the reality was of normal people being torn from their homes and incarcerated, for no other reason than their genealogy and how they looked.


It wasn’t known at the time, but the Germans were doing the same thing at he same time, rounding up Jewish and ethnic minorities for work and death camps. Yet we were taking the moral high ground.  


The camps were closed in 1945. Families went back home to find their homes taken, businesses sold, and everything else desecrated and vandalized.


The photos were hidden away, so many people for many years, never knew about the internment.


PART 5: A VISUAL LIFE

After the war ended, Dorothea kept taking photos. She traveled around the world, documenting communities in Egypt, Ecuador, Korea, and elsewhere.


She was often plagued by illness, and finally succumbed in 1965.


Before Dorothea, photography as an art form was pretty focused on being objective. The idea being, the photographer was an anonymous eye for the public.


But Dorothea knew innately that objectivity was a fallacy. How can you be objective when witnessing such misery?


In a world today where everything comes from an angle, it’s easy to lament some supposed past times when journalists were neutral, photographers objective.


But I don’t think that was ever the case. Journalism always comes from people, and often, corporations and billionaires who own the presses. Art always comes from people, and with every choice made, they leave their personal mark and take.


Dorothea might say we should embrace that, as the camera (and perhaps other art) is a tool.


So what can we learn from this?

  • We go with our gut. The things that scare us, the things that others tell us not to do, might be the things that define us, and impact the world.

  • We tell and show the truth. The terrible, ugly truths of this world.

  • And we commit to making art as resistance for the long term. For a better world.

 

 

OUTRO

The Art of Resistance is a podcast from Rebel Yell Creative. To make art that matters, every creative person needs support. Find yours at RebelYellCreative.com.


This is Amy Lee Lillard, and I wrote, narrated, and produced this show. Check the show notes for all sources. And head to rebelyellcreative.com for full show transcripts, art, and more.


I’ll see you next time.  

 

 

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