Kevin J. Miyazaki

Tule Lake internment camp, California

Kevin J. Miyazaki (b. 1966, USA) is an editorial and fine art photographer based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He began his career on the staff of The Cincinnati Enquirer, and later became the photography director at Cincinnati Magazine. He went on to become the photographer at Milwaukee Magazine, and left five years ago to pursue freelance editorial work. His publication credits include, Time, Newsweek, Forbes, Fortune, National Geographic Traveler and numerous others. He is represented by Redux Pictures.

About the Photograph:

“In the series Camp Home, I document the reuse of buildings from the Tule Lake internment camp, where my father’s family was sent during World War ll. The barracks used to house Japanese and Japanese American internees were dispersed throughout the neighboring landscape following the war. Adapted into homes and outbuildings by returning veterans under a homesteading movement, many still stand on land surrounding the original camp site. In photographing these buildings, I explore family history, both my own and that of the current building owners – this is physical space where our unique American histories come together. Because photography was forbidden by internees, very few photographs of homelife were made by the families themselves. So my pictures act as evidence, though many years later, of a domestication rarely recorded during the initial life of the structures. This picture was made in a building owned by the Prosser family. Now grown, the Prosser children opened their childhood home and allowed me to photograph. In the room they called “the bunkroom,” it seemed little had changed since the Prossers were teenagers. The bb guns and ballcaps especially resonated with me, as my father was a teenager during his time in the internment camp.”