20/20 Vision

The Art of Contemporary University Printmaking

John Newman

During school I learned that my graduate advisor, Roger Shimomura, had been documenting the experiences of his Japanese-American family in the Minidoka, Idaho internment camp.  Surprisingly, in later conversations with my mother and other family members, I discovered that over 8,000 Japanese-Americans were settled in a relocation camp in my hometown of Rowher, Arkansas.

As Roger and I shared these stories with each other we began to recognize the variegated experiences of each of our families.  Roger’s family, like many Americans today, saw this as a horrific moment in American history, while my mother and family perceived the lives of these interned Americans as being better than their Jim Crow Southern experience.  These conversations led Roger and me to develop a series of works that depict this moment in history from dual vantage points.

This print, “Internees I,” captures my mother and her sisters walking past the internment camp.