Just Beneath the Surface: Masumi Hayashi Dives into our Polluted Landscapes.

By Craig Kirk

Meticulously pieced together, the photo-collages of Masumi Hayashi, now on display at the Japanese American National Museum, seek to explore the manner in which the seemingly pristine hides the horrors of pollution, both environmental and emotional.

The exhibit, "Sights Unseen: The Photographic Constructions of Masumi Hayashi," running through September 14th at JANM, features a complete view of her artistic thesis, each image a panoramic view of locales loaded with meanings deeper than their pristine exteriors. By abstracting these images so greatly through the use of dozens of individual photographs, Hayashi forces the viewer to look beyond the surface of these images, and explore the pain that lies just beneath the surface.

Hayashi's initial exploration of EPA Superfund sites lays the groundwork for her body of work. These sites, former toxic waste dumps, are loaded with highly poisonous, yet largely invisible, pollutants. The bucolic images constructed of these landscapes, such as that of "EPA Superfund Site 666," contrast highly with the severe level of pollution that exists just below the surface.

The meat of the exhibition, though, lies in Hayashi's images of the remains of Japanese internment camps from World War II. Born in the Gila River camp towards the end of the war, Hayashi's highly abstract images of these camps, worn down over years of abandonment, are all the more powerful. A logical extension of the images of her EPA Superfund images, Hayashi moves away from physical pollution and focuses on the social and emotional pollution that permeates the internment camp sites.

In addition to images of camps in America, the exhibit includes a series of works on internment camps in Canada, a much less documented aspect of the mass-exclusion.

Incarceration is a long-running theme in her works presented in this show. A series of her work on abandoned prison buildings further highlights the consistent view of the unseen pollution of spaces.

The end of the exhibit fills out her thesis quite well, branching out from 'polluted' sites into locales that are imbued with other socially constructed meanings. These images focus on sites in Asia with a high level of spiritual importance. These images serve as a counter-point to her earlier work, demonstrating how the social meaning of location can be constructed in wildly different terms.

Hayashi's exhibit fits very well with the other exhibits featured in the JANM galleries. Her retrospective look at the internment camp sites, long since abandoned and broken down, are reciprocated quite well by exhibits detailing the struggles of the Japanese-American community as documented photographically. As the viewer winds their way through the other galleries, various artifacts such as suitcases and partially rebuilt barracks fill in the gaps of what once populated the abandoned sites Hayashi captures.

The photographic image has played a key role in the documentation of the Japanese-American experience. The eye of the photojournalist has captured much of the hardships faced by the community throughout their life in the United States. With respect to this, Hayashi's images are all the more effective, abstracting a human tragedy that has already seen so much documentation. The photojournalism of the era exists almost as ghosts, haunting reminders of the tragedy to which these now long empty locales bared witness.

"Sights Unseen: The Photographic Constructions of Masumi Hayashi" is currently running through September 14, 2003 at the Japanese American National Museum, 369 East First Street in Little Tokyo. The museum is open Tuesday-Sunday, 10am-5pm, and Thursday, 10am-8pm.

August 1, 2003