Stones. Mark Kirchner
Mark Kirchner has been returning to Manzanar for over 25 years. Kirchner’s project is Manzanar Pilgrimage which focuses on the annual memorial gathering and documents former internees and their families’ stories. Mark explains in his artist statement:
This project is a work in progress. As a photographer, I felt the need to create a visual record as the Japanese American community struggled to preserve the site, its history and legacy. My primary role is that of a witness. The process of witnessing the pilgrimages over many years has given me the time to attempt a holistic photographic document. Within this body of work I hope to make visible those brief moments when the human spirit is revealed. I have discovered that some of the people I have photographed do not see themselves or their actions as historically significant and rarely worth photographing. I hope some of their modesty has been instilled in me.
Inscription: Watanabe. Sentry Post Building, 1984. Mark Kirchner
Inscription: March 30th 194(2) and Kanji. 2006. Mark Kirchner
It is somewhat fortuitous that Mark asked me not to include images of people and that I didn’t wish to include any pictures of people. Manzanar is a peculiar site and certainly not of a human scale. As the Eastern Sierras drop off sharply, the plateau of high desert to the east is a stark landscape. Beautiful, awesome, sublime – yes; livable – barely by today’s standards.
Some could argue that Manzanar should be allowed to recede into the dust and weeds of the California/Nevada borderlands – that humans should never have been interred and nor should human’s need to return. But we are funny creatures and I, for one, appreciate the impression of meaning upon a site once the site has run through its cycle of original use. The dialogue about former sites of incarceration is where one finds responsibility, complexity and community.
Inscription: Remember. Sentry Post Building, 2007. Mark Kirchner
Inscription: Kubota 4-1-42. 1984. Mark Kirchner
Manzanar is a flat site with no place to hide. Everything that is visible is rooted to the ground, and all that is invisible is in the memories and oral histories of the people Mark Kirchner cares so much about. If Kirchner’s concern is preserving the stories of people interred, my concern is his images that reflect that aim. I chose these images because they speak of definites; definite people, dates and action (scribing). They are evidence of existence and time. These images are also all surface which to me summarises the barren desert site.
There is a poetic beauty that one speculates the original scrawler was aware or unaware of – that being, the paradox that the necessary human constructions at Manzanar are those to hold the visible, physical evidence. The concrete is as incongruous to the site at Manzanar as mass human occupation was between 1942 and 1945.
Inscription: Tets Ishikawa, 45, 55, 66, 83. Sentry Post Building, 1984 and 2007. Mark Kirchner
Inscription: Itch 3-30-43. 1983. Mark Kirchner
Kirchner explains further:
Since the annual pilgrimage lasts only a few hours, I knew it would take many years to make the images for the foundation of this work. As the event grew from the intimate Manzanar Pilgrimage and Potluck of the early 1980s to the pilgrimages we experience today, the task of identifying and gathering contact information has grown. After the 2007 pilgrimage I decided to try to contact the people in my photographs. Most of my free time last year was spent in research and correspondence. I have attempted to identify and contact every person photographed on this site. I still have not been 100 percent successful with this effort. I am hopeful that any person that remains unidentified will in time contact me.
If this post can help Mark Kirchner in his noble endeavour I would be thrilled. Tell your neighbours about it!
____________________________________
Mark Kirchner is an expert bookbinder and salmon flies crafter. Here is his Silver Studios website. Read Kirchner’s biography. Found via photoexchange.
Thanks to Mark Kirchner for his permission to reproduce images and the helpful background information on the project.
____________________________________
Comment from Mark Kirchner: I like that you picked up on the nature of the artifacts and their relationship to the earth. At one time there were 800 buildings on the site. Now there are 4 buildings.
Prison Photography 
2 comments
Comments feed for this article
February 21, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Mark Shapiro
Mark Kirchners images are stunning and haunting keeping alive America in its shame of internment of the Japanese Amercians of which I view as the Holocaust of the Japanese in America without the ovens.
His images are truly remarkable and speak volumnes of that time in our history (World War 2), and not letting us forget that time frame.
His efforts to educate the new generation of that time also is amazing since this time in our history is rarely taught in schools and as a 30 year retired high school teacher, I commend Mark on his diligence and contribution on Manzanar and also the entire internment issue of that time.
February 21, 2009 at 1:09 pm
petebrook
Hey Mark. I agree with your praise for Mark’s images. I think he is weaving images and memory together. He and I have discussed other photographers at Manzanar and so expect future posts covering Ansel Adams, Toyo Miyatake and Clem Abers.
The shame of internment is a stain on America’s WWII conduct, but I can’t go so far as to compare it to the holocaust. America certainly herded a huge portion of it population into camps based on race, but they never conducted a policy of extermination. Genocide is a loaded term and we have seen politicians recently dispute when or when not it should be applied.
Genocide is the key and final issue when making any comparisons with the holocaust … and I can’t go that far.
In time I will be featuring images from concentration camp prisons and gulags and other historical (wartime) sites of incarceration. Comparison and contrast can always be brought between conditions of confinement, populations activities, authority & administration. Here we can find common ground.
I think of Adams’ picture of the young Japanese American Internee with a freshly plucked cabbage. Some might say idealistically bucolic amidst rigid war-camp reality, but the picture and the event still occurred however Adams’ spun it. That same image would not have come forth from Auschwitz or Dachau or other Nazi camps.
On another note, I came across your blog post during my research for this piece. I particularly like the money!
http://wizardofbaum.blogspot.com/2008/10/wizard-of-oz-money.html