Mark Ludak
In Plain Sight

In Plain Sight

In Plain Sight takes its title from a particular form of erasure — not destruction, but a quieter, more deliberate forgetting.

This work bears witness to the lasting effects of prejudice, fear, and forced relocation through the history of World War II internment and detention in the United States. Focusing on sites where Japanese American citizens, as well as Italian and German nationals and citizens, were confined, the photographs consider places and histories that have receded from public awareness.

These are places where families were uprooted, communities surveilled and detained, then largely forgotten by the country that held them. Between 110,000 and 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry were subject to forced removal, the majority of them American citizens. Approximately 11,500 people of German ancestry and 3,000 of Italian ancestry — many of them U.S. citizens — were interned as well.