Monday, August 27, 2007

In a photo story, such as Adams uses, you just can't get a realistic feel for what life is like for the people in the photos. In Adams photos of life in a Japanese internment camp, all you see are smiling people laughing and playing cards. Embrey paints a comletely different picture in her written account about life in Manzanar. Embrey goes into detail to let the reader know that life in these camps was no picnic, it was miserable. Many of the children in this camp had never known any other country besides america, yet they were being treated as though the were Japanese soldiers. While in my opinion life in Embrey's story is much more accurate than the life shown in Adams' pictures, I still belive their are some things in Adams' photos that you can learn about Manzanar that you can't from Embrey's essay. One of those things being happiness. Their is none to be found in Embrey's essay, but it is everywhere in Adams' photos. I believe that this place wasn't always gloomy, because that generally is not a person's nature. People try to make the best of situations regardless how bleak the outlook may be and in the case of Adams' photos, I believe the people were genuinely happy when their pictures were taken.