“Grandmother” 60 x 37

“Grandmother” 60 x 37 ink on panel

This is a portrait of my grandmother I did left handed as I injured the nerve in my right arm. It is inspired by the same photograph as my grandfather’s portrait, taken by Dorothea Lange when she was commissioned to photograph Japanese Americans being interned during the start of the US entry into World War II. This shot was taken in San Francisco as my grandmother and her family waited to board a bus for an internment camp in Utah. My grandfather and grandmother were immigrants from Japan, but my father and his brothers were born and raised in San Francisco.

The words used to make the marks that compose this portrait are the text from the Immigration Act of 1917, which barred most immigration from Asia. The late 19th century saw the rise of “Yellow peril” the perceived threat of Asian societies replacing the American identity which led to a series of immigration acts in the late 1800s early 1900s. There was the Chinese exclusion act of 1882, the Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907, the Immigration Act of 1917, and the Immigration act of 1924, that were aimed exclusively at Asian immigration.

Detail:

Dorothea Lange photo