First impressions can be important, except when they are wrong. While the graphic–heavy content in Seen and Unseen and sparse text may initially appear as a lightweight treatment only for youth, it is nothing of the sort. Moments later, those same simple black-lined illustrations, judiciously filled with various shades of watercolor tones and carefully placed with text and ample historical photographs, fully immerse the viewer into a unique world of storytelling. It soon becomes clear that this is a hard–hitting presentation of the three most notable photographers of the Japanese American experience during WWII that holds no punches.
The exquisite presentation is no doubt due to the personal connections that author Elizabeth Partridge and illustrator Lauren Tamaki had in creating Seen and Unseen: What Dorothea Lange, Toyo Miyatake and Ansel Adams’ Photographs Reveal about the Japanese American Incarceration. Partridge is the goddaughter of Dorothea Lange and Tamaki’s grandfather was a lawyer who fought for rights for incarcerated Japanese Canadians after WWII.
What they had set out to accomplish is laudable and their resulting work extraordinary, as most others would have considered their goals impossible, especially for a book intended for a wide audience, including youth. In addition to introducing three photographers, each with unique styles and motivations, they tell what restraints each artist had and what meanings and stories are unseen in the images. If that is not enough, the photographs, text, and illustrations also serve to communicate and amplify the excruciating experience of what it was like to be carted off and incarcerated because of looking like the enemy.
The power of storytelling in Seen and Unseen is the result of the quality of the materials and the placement and linking of those elements on the page. The text is rendered lean and simple, not to reduce content, but to intensify it and to be unmistakably understood. Graphic treatment and placement of text further contributes to the effect. The caliber of the photographs is
unquestionable and they are reproduced beautifully and judiciously chosen, not merely for their artistic value, but for their value to further the narrative.
Finally, the hand drawn elements serve multiple roles; they add emotional punch to both text and photographs, move and pace, and carry the narrative itself. For instance, the illustrator frames one photograph with barbed wire, because both Lange and Adams were prohibited to include fences in their official photos. In another, the illustrated context of a simple wedding photograph is expanded by showing the moment Toyo Miyatake snaps the shutter and remains out of frame, while FBI agents on the page’s edge are about to barge in and ruin the wedding festivities.
With sterile simplicity, the opening foldout states the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The midnight black page is the canvas for a simple watercolor of an enormous explosion and ocean waves wholly rendered in blood red. On the opposite page, a Japanese family huddles around a radio awaiting the news, framed in a small and confined bubble surrounded by the same blackness and gloom.
Similarly in another illustration, a bleak void dominates the scene as a lone bus moves across two pages carrying these Americans to prison, with only the bus’s headlights breaking the darkness of the desert, but only on the extreme edge of the page. A solitary full moon adds a mournful glow of the unknown and the few words placed on the pages add little comfort and insufficient explanation for the injustice.
In a later image, Toyo Miyatake’s car moves efficiently across the two-page spread in three stacked images, portraying his journey out of the desert prison back to civilization. Whereas the bus illustration slows the pace of the narrative, this one speeds through quickly towards the light of freedom.
In short, the unique format puts both the eye and narrative on a moving path of masterful storytelling that is cinematic, never static, carefully paced, and emotion filled. Seen and Unseen is proof that books are still pertinent, especially those books that incorporate such creativity. With the turn of the page, there is purpose in each new design and style. The extraordinary collaboration between author and illustrator is reflected in the perfect balance of visual elements and text as they together advance the story in in-step partnership.
The creators do not shy away from difficult issues. The need for updated terms is addressed (for example, “incarceration” instead of “internment” and “forced removal” instead of “evacuation”). At the book’s end, there are a number of short essays on the Model Minority Myth (by the book’s illustrator), Constitutional issues, and others. There are also academic references, such as notes and a catalog of the included photographs. There is no compromise to dilute content while staying true to the book’s mission to be of interest to all.
Seen and Unseen takes the reader on a unique heart-felt journey and tells a story so important. With so few actual survivors of the Japanese American incarceration still alive, reviving their stories and making them live again for a modern audience has never been so critical. With its sheer visual power and judiciously crafted text, Seen and Unseen does just that by breathing life into stories that need to be remembered.
It is hard to imagine a better introduction to these three very unique photographic visionaries; even for those who already know them, the journey provided by the book is a worthy ride. In Seen and Unseen, Elizabeth Partridge and Lauren Tamaki have dutifully honored Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams, and Toyo Miyatake, and all the Japanese Americans who suffered injustice in the land of freedom during WWII.
