By: Noeka Nimmervoll, Staff Writer
Enemy Alien: Tamio Wakayama is on display at the Vancouver Art Gallery from October 3, 2025, to February 22, 2026. Curated by Paul Wong, this postmortem solo exhibition of the photographer Tamio Wakayama features collections from a career spanning over 50 years before his death in 2018. Wakayama was born in 1941, a time of aggressive discrimination against Japanese Canadians by the Canadian government, with around 21,000 people detained and dispossessed, many of whom were forced into internment camps. Japanese Canadian prisoners were labelled “enemy aliens” due to rampant racial prejudice and political fear of a Japanese invasion. Furthermore, the government seized their possessions, homes, and businesses, sold them to pay for the costs of their internment, and never returned them to their original owners. In exploring injustice and discrimination against his community, Wakayama turned to photography, launching his first foray into activism.
Wakayama photographed and participated in many political events throughout his life — including the Civil Rights Movement and the redress movement of Japanese Canadians. He also embarked on personal journeys for meaning and connection, which became an integral part of his work and life. The exhibition featured his memoir, Soul on Rice, now published posthumously via the Vancouver Art Gallery, as well as a film entitled Between Pictures: The Lens of Tamio Wakayama (2024) by multidisciplinary artist Cindy Mochizuki. After a visit to the gallery, I hereby share my musings.
The gallery is quiet on the eyes when you enter, black and white, the only colour in the room being a violent red with these words: Enemy Alien Tamio Wakayama. I began viewing photograph upon photograph of this man’s work. Even with these harsh words in mind, I began to see the world through the eyes of a man who loved people. His photos, beginning with his time with Black communities in the South, captured the tangible tension of the time, as well as the joy, resilience, and wisdom of the African American community there. Some images evoked a warmth of community and life-in-motion, while others captured the raw, tumultuous spirit in every individual of a crowd. It occurred to me that pictures like his can only be taken when the photographer, and the camera, are accepted by the community.
The exhibition displayed many of Wakayama’s journeys on his lifelong fight for social justice. He photographed Indigenous life in Saskatchewan, the struggle of Doukhobors maintaining their traditions in BC, anti-war protests in Ontario, and more. On one personal journey, he visited Japan and captured scenes of families cooking, strangers mingling in parks, communities planting trees, and people enjoying life. These photographs were often composed around a single person in a group, capturing them in a candid moment of simple pleasure and living. Some of his other works were much more dramatic. He later became the official photographer of the Powell Street Festival in Vancouver and served this post for almost twenty years. His photographs from this time are filled with action and captured a thriving community in moments of intense focus, flow, and fun.
The story of Japanese Canadians isn’t told enough, and such a remarkable life and career as Wakayama’s is long overdue for its time in the spotlight.
He was a resilient activist and artist, devoted to pursuing justice, who searched grandly for community in a world hostile to his existence, and seemed to have found it, time after time.
I am in love with the tenderness and humanity that is so prominent in his work and displayed at this exhibition, and my visit to Enemy Alien inspired me to continue my own work for a community in the place that I call home, and beyond.
