Pictured pioneers: photographic representation of Japanese-American identity on the frontier

This visual historical analysis places a photographic representation of the American Western desert as a foremost lens for understanding the way that Japanese internment was then interpreted and has been since memorialised. The work draws from oral histories and archival images to document how photography and the landscape at Manzanar in the Eastern Sierras influenced the way incarcerated communities were racially and politically transformed – from national enemy, to all-American pioneers.