Hacker News Reader

Comment by retrac | Hacker News Reader

These wouldn't count as rare as today he is a rather widely known photographer, but Wikimedia has a large collection of colour photographs from Alfred Palmer, mostly taken from 1941 to 1943 for the American Office of War Information. While effectively propaganda in nature, they're undeniably beautiful photographs.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Alfred_T._Palmer

Some favourites:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Rosie_th...

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Carpente...

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/A-20_Hav...

View on HN

Dorethea Lange was working for the FSA and made work as Americans were rounded up for the crime of Japanese heritage.

https://anchoreditions.com/blog/dorothea-lange-censored-phot...

Her work was censored as part of the changed propaganda agenda from the we-are-all-citizens of Migrant Mother to ends-justify racism.

If one can, I urge visiting one of these camps. You'll see many such photos on display. But for me it took feeling the brutal heat of the surrounding desert in Manzanar. There is no shade, no AC. In the summer, it gets up to 110º. In the winter, it barely breaks 40º. In every photo you'll see a cloud of fine dust on the ground. It hurts.

And the US jailed more than 120,000 Japanese Americans there.

For those who cannot visit, it's worth seeing how inhospitable the location is: https://goo.gl/maps/wz7NTbhMMYTid4b26

Less well known, there was also internment of Alaska Natives in inhumane conditions. One camp had a mortality rate above 10 percent.

https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/haunted-by-world-war-ii-...

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/us-forcibly-detain...

In a related note, people are always surprised that Ansel Adams also photographed Japanese internment: https://www.loc.gov/collections/ansel-adams-manzanar/about-t...

Photographs by them and others are displayed at the Manzanar National Historic Site. Both the web site and the physical site are worth visiting.

What all of the photographers had in common was a desire to show some kind of truth, and an inability to avoid restrictions from the authorities in the pursuit of that truth. What we are left with is a valuable resource to help us understand the camp experience. Although these artists were censored and manipulated, they provide for us today a concrete record of a time when American citizens were held behind barbed wire without due process of law. For that we are grateful.

https://www.nps.gov/manz/learn/photosmultimedia/photogallery...

My favorite:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/B17F_-_W...

Almost Kubrick...

> These wouldn't count as rare as today he is a rather widely known photographer, but Wikimedia has a large collection of colour photographs from Alfred Palmer, mostly taken from 1941 to 1943 for the American Office of War Information.

The photos in the OP seem like a grab bag, they include some of those photos (like this one: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:M-4_tank_crews_of_th...).

> While effectively propaganda in nature, they're undeniably beautiful photographs.

It's worth noting that the DOD collects all sorts of media and pictures from war and battle. What's sent out to the public is curated for a number of reasons.

Having dabbled in film photography during high school and college, I'm amazed at the quality of these images and also being in color. The processing for color was much more difficult (last I checked) since you couldn't prep the paper like you can with black and white using a red filter.

Thanks for bringing those to my attention. Very beautiful indeed.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com