Toyo Miyatake
1895–1979
Toyo Miyatake began his photography career in 1909, shortly after immigrating to Los Angeles from Japan. He first studied under pictorial photographer Harry Shigeta and later Edward Weston, with whom he developed a close friendship. Miyatake shared with Weston an interest in Japanese woodblock printing and European modernism—sources that would influence his approach toward form and composition. In 1923 Miyatake established his own studio and began making portraits in the Little Tokyo section of Los Angeles, capturing figures such as the painter and poet Yumeji Takehisa, novelist Thomas Mann, and modern dancer Michio Ito, who made Miyatake his company photographer. The artist’s photographs from this period range from intimate portraits of the dancer to abstract studies of motion, light, and shadow.
In 1942, following Pearl Harbor and the US declaration of war on Japan, more than 100,000 Japanese Americans were relocated to internment camps. Miyatake and his family were forced from their home and taken to a camp in Manzanar, California, a remote outpost in the desert. As photography was outlawed in the camp, Miyatake smuggled in a lens, built a makeshift box camera, and began surreptitiously documenting life at Manzanar. He was eventually discovered but allowed to continue shooting, in part because of support from his friend Ansel Adams, who had photographed the camp as a visitor. Miyatake’s photos are among the most poignant traces of this historical episode; the little girl pictured in Untitled (Memorial Service at Memorial Monument, Manzanar), for example, captures a deep human longing, while the adults around her stoically carry on in the face of unjust circumstances.
Roles
Photographer
ULAN identifier
500104376
Names
Tōyō Miyatake, Toyo Miyatake, 東洋 宮武
Information from the Getty Research Institute's Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License. Accessed November 10, 2024.
