“He went down as Tom and he returned as Tamio. That name shift conveys volumes.”
Sometimes it is necessary, even vital to help someone through their own trauma before you can adequately address your own. The late Japanese-Canadian photographer Tamio Wakayama learned this lesson by way of his experiences in the American South during the civil-rights era, a tale chronicled in Cindy Mochizuki’s documentary Between Pictures: The Lens of Tamio Wakayama.
Tamio was born a mere nine months before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour in the salvo that would trigger the USA’s belated entrance into WWII. This meant that he was forced to spend the start of his childhood in the confines of an internment camp, banished from his birthplace on the coast of British Columbia. After the end of the war, his family escaped by deportation by settling in Chatham, ON which happened to be situated at the end of the underground railroad where countless escaped slaves from south of the Mason-Dixon line had sought refuge in the 19th century.
Perhaps it was growing up in this largely black community that inspired Tamio to hop in his VW Beetle and head south in 1963 to lend his assistance to the burgeoning civil rights movement. Almost by accident, he found himself working in the darkroom for a student-led organisation, SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) where he discovered a newfound passion for photography.
With every click of the shutter, Tamio would document the people and places at the centre of the fight for racial equality. With an inextinguishable fire now lit, Tamio returned to Canada in the late 60s, determined to unpack the trauma and injustice inflicted upon his own community. Children were not taught about the Japanese Internment in school and many Japanese Canadians, Nikkei (first gen) and Nissei (2nd gen) alike, refused to talk about their experiences.
It was in this environment that the Powell Street Festival in Vancouver’s Oppenheimer Park was born. Its inaugural edition taking place in 1977, the centennial of the first Japanese immigrants arrival in Canada, the festival sought to celebrate Japanese culture right in the neighbourhood where a Japanese-Canadian community had once thrived before the internment. Tamio was the festival’s official photographer from the outset and captured the event’s formative years up until at least the early 1990s.
Mpchizuki’s audio-visual portrait of Tamio starts off strongly enough, deftly balancing talking head interviews with eye-pleasing animated segments. This makes it all the more disappointing though when the feature mysteriously loses steam midway through and seems to give up on its subject, skipping nearly 30 years of his life to jump straight to his death in 2018 at age 77. The 70 minute runtime isn’t so much a product of efficiency as it is of incompleteness.
The result is that viewers are left with a better sense of Tamio’s work than the man himself, glimpsed only fleetingly in archival interviews and stills after the animation runs out. A rule of showmanship is to leave the audience wanting more, but here we just feel left wanting.
Between Pictures serves as a solid introduction to the life and work and Tamio that seems woefully incomplete. Tamil’s pictures may be worth the proverbial thousand words, but his biographical doc shortchanges viewers on the word count. You may be better off saving your time and seeking out a coffee table book of Tamio’s photos instead.
5.5/10
Between Pictures plays as part of DOXA on Thursday May 9, 12:30pm @ SFU Cinema