Art Salon returns with artists, experts to discuss ‘Shared Experiences of Manzanar’

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In conjunction with the new book and corresponding show of Port Townsend photographer Brian Goodman’s images of the Manzanar internment camp, Northwind Arts Center and Port Townsend School of the Arts will present the latest in their continuing online series Art Salon, “Shared Experiences of Manzanar,” at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 18.

The event, notes PtSA spokeswoman Meg Kaczyk, “includes a very distinguished panel including Michael Adams, Ansel Adams’ son and curator of the Adams photographic estate, and scholars Clarence Moriwaki and Duncan Ryuken Williams, and will be moderated by Kerry Tremain.”

The first, and one of the largest, concentration camps established by the U.S. government in response to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Manzanar internment camp finally closed on Nov. 21, 1945.

Located in the desolate Owens Valley on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California, Manzanar became a haunting destination for Goodman for decades, culminating in a book and exhibit (currently showing at Northwind Arts Center): “Manzanar: Their Footsteps Remain – 40 years of Photography.”

Art Salon is free to attend and will be held live via the videoconferencing platform Zoom.

Visit www.PtArts.org or www.NorthwindArts.org for the event link.

Panelists Adams, Moriwaki, and Williams will join Goodman in an informal conversation about the reality of Manzanar, its history, and poignant relevance to our times.

Tremain, a writer and photographer, will moderate the discussion about the photographic memorial to the loss of constitutional freedoms, a government coverup, and the ensuing indignity forced upon an entire people.

“Like pottery shards discovered in an archeological dig, these images give us clues to the story of a people who experienced intolerable indignities, fear, and racism while struggling for survival,” Goodman said.

Today, 75 years later, it’s more important than ever that we look back at places like Manzanar and learn from our history, he added.

“We must educate ourselves and teach our children to look beyond their fear, to be compassionate and tolerant. And we need to fight for our rights and the rights of our fellow human beings.”

Adams, son of famed photographer Ansel Adams, was born in the Yosemite Valley and educated at Wasatch Academy in Mount Pleasant, Utah, and Stanford University. He received a bachelor’s degree in geography from Fresno State College, and his master’s from Washington University School of Medicine.

He retired as a master general from the Air Force and Air National Guard in 1993, and from duty as Deputy Surgeon General of the USAF for the Air National Guard.

He is chairman of the board of the Ansel Adams Gallery, now in its 118th year of operation in Yosemite Valley.

Goodman has been making photographs for more than 50 years. 

After studying at the Bezalel Academy of Art & Design in Jerusalem, Israel, and Otis/Parsons School of Art & Design in Los Angeles, Goodman took a detour from his original interests of fine art and documentary photography and moved into the realm of commercial photography. In 2015, he retired to concentrate exclusively on fine art.

Moriwaki lives on Bainbridge Island. He is the president of the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Community and member of the Speakers Bureau at Humanities Washington. He served as a spokesperson for the Clinton Administration and was a Strategic Planning Committee Member at the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation.  

Williams is the author of several books on Buddhism and Japanese culture, most recently “American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War,” which was number three on the LA Times Bestseller List for Nonfiction.

Tremain, the moderator, has worked as a writer, editor, art director, and designer of books and magazines, as a curator of exhibitions, and as a founder and director of arts organizations.

During 10 years at Mother Jones magazine, he served as art director, creative director, and executive editor, and was the founder and director of Mother Jones International Fund for Documentary Photography, which raised $5 million to provide grants to photographers globally.

Tremain has curated exhibitions in Paris, Mexico City, and San Francisco, most recently Yosemite: A Storied Landscape at the California Historical Society, for which he also created an interactive multimedia e-book.

The Art Salon series is a partnership between the Port Townsend School of the Arts and Northwind, bringing artists, art teachers, and other art professionals together for occasional artist talks, panel discussions and lectures.