Ansel Adams’s Manzanar photos “burn one’s eyes.” Twice in 1943, Ansel Adams ventured to the desert of east central California, to focus his lens, not on some magnificent landscape, but on the desolate Manzanar War Relocation Center to document the life of the Japanese interred there. The result was the 1944 publication of Born Free and Equal, a 112-book that presented a selection of his Manzanar photos with text by Adams. The MFA exhibition “Ansel Adams: In Our Time” thoughtfully and beautifully demonstrates Adams’ influence on the work of several 21st-century photographers. But the exhibition (which ended February 24) offers up only four small photos and a brief explanation about this little-known chapter in his life’s work. Adams’s Manzanar photos, which warrant further exploration, are strongly “of our time,” a time when once again “the other” is being demonized. On February … [Read more...] about REVIEW OF ‘ANSEL ADAMS: IN OUR TIME’ AT MFA BOSTON