Born Free, Born Equal - Joseph Maida and Ansel Adams
For this anniversary edition of his collaboration with Ansel Adams’ Manzanar archive, Maida pairs his first Act, the 2018 edition of his book Born Free and Equal: The Story of Loyal _________- Americans, with his second Act, Printed Media x Printed Justice: Exhibition-in-a-Box, an adaptable, modular, DIY show of political posters from 2020, which he gifted as a call to action to institutions with a longstanding commitment to Adams’ work including New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), which originally exhibited Adams’ Manzanar series in 1944.

With Born Free, Born Equal, Joseph Maida continues to illuminate the past’s relationship to the present’s social and political climate in the United States, highlighting the importance of revisiting historic art and archives with the knowledge and resources of today. 



"I grew up at the time of World War II. The irony was we were fighting a war against racism and yet by an Executive Order of President Roosevelt people who had done nothing wrong– except they were of Japanese ancestry– were interned in camps far from their homes. That was a dreadful mistake." – Ruth Bader Ginsburg