Enemy Alien: Tamio Wakayama

October 3, 2025–February 22, 2026

Enemy Alien is the first major solo exhibition and retrospective of works by documentary photographer Tamio Wakayama.

His career, spanning over fifty years, began with his photographs of the Civil Rights Movement in the southern United States. Wakayama documented many of the social justice movements and countercultures of the 1960s and 70s. His work tells stories of community, joy and resistance in the face of injustice. The exhibition also highlights Wakayama’s documentation of Indigenous communities in Saskatchewan and the Doukhobors of eastern BC.

The exhibition culminates with Wakayama’s activism and work organizing and documenting the Redress movement for Japanese Canadians and his deep connections to Vancouver.

Enemy Alien: Tamio Wakayama will be accompanied by an exhibition catalogue featuring Wakayama’s unpublished memoir Soul on Rice.

Organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery as an initiative of the Centre for Global Asias and guest curated by Paul Wong with Joanne So Jeong Chung, former Curatorial Assistant, and Anna Luth, Curatorial Assistant

Publication

Cover of an exhibition catalogue with red, capital letters that read "Enemy Alien Tamio Wakayama." Below the title, in a smaller font, it reads: "Edited by Paul Wong." The red letters appear over a black-and-white photograph of a young, black boy with no shirt on, who smiles and beams out at the camera, while seemingly flexing his muscles.

Enemy Alien: Tamio Wakayama

Published by the Vancouver Art Gallery and Figure1 Publishing, 2025

Flexibound, 288 pages

Edited by: Paul Wong
Contributors: Eva Respini, Mayumi Takasaki, Tamio Wakayama and Paul Wong

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