Refitting the picture frame

1. Have students think to themselves, then share in small groups: What is the purpose of a photograph?
2. Bring discussion to the class and review answers. Discuss how we can categorize these purposes into types that include (but are not limited to) the following: personal, social, legal, documentational.
3. Review what a primary source is, and note how, while we often think of legal and documentary photos as primary sources, the former two can also fall under the same category.

1. Have students take a sheet of paper, and write the alphabet going down along the page (one letter per line).
2. Then, in pairs, have students come up with a noun (and/or adjective) that relates to the topic). 
3. Invite volunteers to share out their words, and explain the connection. 

• • E.g. 1, Lemon Creek for L, an internment site.
  • E.g. 2, Dispossession for D, which refers to the government’s act of taking the property of Japanese Canadians (including boats, homes, other valuables)

1. Project the following website, for students to see: https://nikkeimuseum.org/www/collections.php. 
2. The Nikkei National Museum offers a variety of archived personal photos. Optionally, or in addition, provide the students with Source A1: Selected images of internment.
3. Give students time to explore photos from different families and/or contributors. Search internment, and internment photos, and guide students through two or three hits.
4. Ask students what they notice. You might expect comments that draw attention to the geographical setting, frequency of shots in the winter, smiling faces, family photographs. At this point, do not judge and/or evaluate – simply notice. 
5. Choose one image to focus on as a class. Have students label, directly and objectively, what they see (e.g. child in the left foreground; snow; mountains in the background; a child holding a hockey stick; single-level house in the background; child is smiling). Record student responses on the board.

1. Invite students to contemplate the following quote: “The photographs are complex. As images they are never simply a transparent record of ‘reality’” (McAllister, 2016).
2. Discuss:
   1. a) What does this mean, in general? (i.e. reword the quote)
   2. What could this mean, in the context of the picture we’re examining?
3. Return to the list of student responses in describing the archival photo: 
   1. What new questions does the image provoke? 
   2. What new information does it offer? 
   3. What existing knowledge does it support?

Notes

McAllister, Kirsten (2006). “Photographs of a Japanese Canadian internment camp: Mourning loss and invoking a future.” Visual Studies, 21 (2), 133–156. DOI: 10.1080/14725860600944989 

1. Invite students to retrieve devices, and go to the following website: Nikkei National Museum Collections. Give students up to 10 minutes to explore, and choose at least one image on which to focus (for now). Alternatively, teachers may have students use the supplied Handout A1: Refitting the photo frame (work).
2. Have them document the source in the handout, then complete the rest of the page. 
3. Circulate as students are working, and assist with students’ questioning processes.
4. Check-in as a class, when most students have completed their review for their first image: what ideas and themes are popping up? 
5. Optional: Ask students to summarize their questions, concerns, and curiosities in one to three sentences, and submit as an exit slip.

1. Optional: If you are comfortable doing so, debrief (anonymously) the general feedback from yesterday’s exit slip. Tell students they will be conducting a further analysis today, of three to four more images.
2. Ask students to retrieve devices, and return to the following website: Nikkei National Museum Collections. Have students complete the rest of the photograph documentation pages (Source A1: Selected images of internment). Circulate as students are working, assist with students’ questioning processes.

1. Have students join in groups of three to four. Allow students time to compare their findings from the image research and analysis done in the previous activity.
2. Project or write the following guiding questions on the board, to facilitate discussion:
   • What drew you to those images? (i.e. why did you choose those ones)
   • As a group, what similarities emerged between your images? What differences?
   • Either consolidate or select three to five key questions, from all your photo examinations. Prepare to share these with the class.
3. Invite groups to share key questions. (Note: As stated earlier, this lesson set is designed to be complementary to an existing unit that focuses on the Japanese Canadian incarceration and dispossession. That said, one such way to extend upon and enrich this three-day lesson is to guide students through an inquiry cycle, where they investigate their curiosities in a more structured and informative process)

1. Invite students to choose one or two interviews to read and/or watch. It is encouraged they record three to five takeaways after each interview, for reference (p. 5-6 in Handout 1).
   • Videos: Nikkei National Museum Oral History Collection 
   • Transcripts (text only): Hastings Park Stories 
   • Audio Interviews: Japanese Canadian Oral History Collection SFU
2. Have students pair in groups of two to three, and exchange findings from their interviews. Have one member share with the class. 
3. Ensure everyone is listening to class contributions, to obtain a wider sense of camp conditions from the survivors.

Notes

“Hastings Park Stories.” Hastings Park 1942 website. http://hastingspark1942.ca/hastings-park-stories/

“Oral History Collections.” Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre. https://centre.nikkeiplace.org/research/oral-history-collection/

“Japanese Canadian Oral History Collection.” SFU Library digital collections. https://digital.lib.sfu.ca/japanese-cdn-audio.

1. Walk students through the final page of Handout A1: Refitting the photo frame (work). The questions printed on this page include the following:
   1. What did you know previously about the conditions of the internment camps? Describe in as much detail as you can.
   2. Think about the survivor interviews that you and your partners explored. Summarize your findings.
   3. How did the photographs depict the internment camp(s)? 
   4. Are there any discrepancies and/or contradictions between the ways in which the internment camps were presented in photos, and experienced in actual life? Why do you think this might be?
   5. Return back to the idea of the purpose of a photograph. What purpose do these archive photos serve today? What purpose do you think they might have served to their owners, at the time they were taken?
2. Depending on the direction of class conversations, the teacher might want to address some of the following ideas:
   1. The idea of photos acts of mini-resistance; cameras were contraband.
   2. Resilience (and/or shikata ga nai mentality) in the attempts at normalcy: smiles in photos, family shots, activities at the internment camp.
   3. Some scenery-focused images: focus on what is not there – the absence of people (i.e. how remote the internment camps were).