The International Center of Photography (ICP) present The Camps America Built, an ongoing project by photographer Haruka Sakaguchi, that brings together portraits, landscape photography, personal testimony and historical documents that reflect on the legacies of Japanese American incarceration during World War II. The project is on view in ICP’s Incubator Space, an ongoing exhibition program launched in 2025 to highlight the work of emerging photographers responding in real time to the world around us, while pushing the boundaries of the documentary tradition. ICP’s Incubator Space is curated by Sara Ickow, Associate Director of Exhibitions at ICP.
After Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, over 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry—two-thirds of whom were U.S.-born citizens—were forcibly displaced from their homes and incarcerated in government-run concentration camps across the country. Since the end of the war, former incarcerees and their descendants have been making ‘pilgrimages’ to these sites in search of healing and closure.
Sakaguchi documents the ten camps as they stand today and the families who journey back to them. Each sitter is asked to handwrite a letter: for former incarcerees, a letter to their younger self when they were incarcerated and for descendants, a letter to a former incarceree they are commemorating. As the United States marks its 250th anniversary, the project explores a critical question: what does it mean to be American?
“I am thrilled to have Haruka Sakaguchi as the fourth photographer presenting work in ICP’s Incubator Space,” said Sara Ickow, Associate Director of Exhibitions at ICP. “Haruka’s clear and careful visual storytelling gives us ways to learn about and examine American history, and to understand and question our current moment.
Projects like The Camps America Built are exactly why we started this space in 2025 and hope to continue to present projects of equal relevance and impact.”
On April 25 from 2PM–3PM Haruka Sakaguchi—the 2026 Infinity Award honoree for the Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism Award—will be in conversation with Julie Abo, independent researcher, community-centered public historian and one of the subjects of the project along with Mika Kennedy, Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies in the Center for the Study of Culture, Race and Ethnicity at Ithaca College, New York. Join the speakers after the program in the ICP Incubator space for a special tea reception from 3PM-4PM.
Haruka Sakaguchi : The Camps America Built
On View Through May 25, 2026
The International Center of Photography
84 Ludlow Street
New York, NY 10002
www.icp.org
