Elusive Truth:
Four Photographers at Manzanar
Ansel Adams, Clem Albers,
Dorothea Lange and Toyo Miyatake

by Gerald H. Robinson
Introduction by Archie Miyatake

In 1942 the United States government declared 110,000 American Japanese residents of the U.S. a threat to national security and incarcerated them in eleven relocation camps around the country. This book tells the story of one such camp, Manzanar, located near Lone Pine in the Owens Valley at the base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

These four reknowned photographers captured Manzanar and its residents at various times throughout its existence, telling the story of Manzanar from four different perspectives. Taken together, they offer a glimpse of the elusive truth of the relocation camps – a cautionary and poignant tale of pain, injustice, and the triumph of the human spirit over adversity and oppression.

While all the photos vividly tell parts of the story, the work of Miyatake carries the greatest resonance and shows the most compassion. A camp resident who had long been a close friend of Edward Weston, he had to smuggle in lenses and film and surreptitiously build a lightproof box to begin his record of camp life because as a camp resident he was not allowed to possess a camera, even though photography had been his trade for over twenty years.

The Revised Second Edition, published January 2008, has greatly improved reproduction of the photos by the four photographers. It also has several text corrections.

112 pages, 10" x 8", cover photo by Ansel Adams, 60 full-size photographs, bibliography, index, endnotes. Published by Carl Mautz Publishing, Revised Second Edition, 2008.
ISBN 1-887694-24-2.     trade paper

Price: $25.00

Also available:

Elusive Truth, cloth edition. ISBN 978-1-887694-23-0

Price: $40.00

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