Reading: "Colors of Confinement" – Eric Muller, UNC

Editor Eric Muller presents “Colors of Confinement: Rare Kodachrome Photographs of Japanese American Incarceration in WW II” at Quail Ridge Books & Music.  The photos were take by Bill Manbo from within the Japanese internment camp where he and his family were forced to live.  The book includes interpretive and personal essays.
Can’t make it? To request a signed or personalized copy, call 828-1588 or 1-800-672-6789 or contact orders@quailridgebooks.com (at least 48 hours in advance for email) to check availability.
 
In 1942, Bill Manbo (1908 -1992) and his family were forced from their Hollywood home into the Japanese American internment camp at Heart Mountain in Wyoming. While there, Manbo documented both the bleakness and beauty of his surroundings, using Kodachrome film, a technology then just seven years old, to capture community celebrations and to record his family’s struggle to maintain a normal life under the harsh conditions of racial imprisonment. “Colors of Confinement” showcases sixty-five stunning images from this extremely rare collection of color photographs, presented along with three interpretive essays by leading scholars and a reflective, personal essay by a former Heart Mountain internee.
The subjects of these haunting photos are the routine fare of an amateur photographer: parades, cultural events, people at play, Manbo’s son. But the images are set against the backdrop of the barbed-wire enclosure surrounding the Heart Mountain Relocation Center and the dramatic expanse of Wyoming sky and landscape. The accompanying essays illuminate these scenes as they trace a tumultuous history unfolding just beyond the camera’s lens, giving readers insight into Japanese American cultural life and the stark realities of life in the camps.
 
DATE:  September 12, 2012
LOCATION:  Quail Ridge Books & Music, 3522 Wade Avenue, Raleigh
TIME:  7:30pm