#photography nerditry:
In 1943, Ansel Adams (with camera) was granted access to the Manzanar Japanese-American internment camp to document the people held there. While Adams was not quite as a great a portrait or documentary photographer as he was at capturing the American landscape, he gave his subjects rich humanity and life.
He subsequently donated both his original negatives as well as some prints to the Library of Congress, without restriction. You can see them at
https://www.loc.gov/collections/ansel-adams-manzanar/about-this-collection/
It’s also instructive to compare Adams’ work from Manzanar with that of another great 20th century photographer who was granted access: Dorothea Lange.
Adams took a superficially upbeat approach, portraying his subjects as highly relatable, ordinary Americans making the best of things under somewhat difficult circumstances.
Lange showed them more as victims, emphasizing the rough conditions and fundamental injustice: https://artsandculture.google.com/story/dorothea-lange-39-s-visit-to-the-japanese-internment-camps/fwVR8MHEGsn72g?hl=en
Both were subversive, though in different ways.
Lange was first and foremost a documentarian who saw herself as an activist. Her most famous work was done for the US Farm Services Administration during the depression (e.g., her iconic “Migrant Mother” portrait). She sought to use photography to expose injustice and improve the world.
Adams, on the other hand, saw himself first and foremost as an artist. He sought to elevate photography as an art form.
(They were close, with deep mutual respect.)
This is, of course, an oversimplification. Lange was an obvious master of formal composition as well as the technical craft of photography, and Adams, who served for decades on the board of the Sierra Club, fully understood the power of photography to influence public and political opinion. But the two approached their artistic practice from very different perspectives.