Joseph Maida's new photographic monograph BORN book, BORN EQUAL raises vital questions about democracy, justice, memory, and representation in the United States today.&160;It was not until the death of his beloved Aunt Katherine Takeshita, a nisei Japanese American from Hawai&699;i, that Maida learned the details of the family&8217;s incarceration during World War II. This discovery prompted Maida to revisit Ansel Adams&8217;s 1943 Manzanar archive in 2017 in the wake of President Trump&8217;s Executive Order 13769. Through obscuring specific faces, names, ethnicities, and dates in Adams&8217;s Manzanar photographs and documents, which were once controversial and are now publicly accessible through the Library of Congress, Maida&8217;s 2018 book,&160;Born book and Equal: The Story of Loyal -Americans, draws parallels between Ansel Adams&8217;s empathetic images of citizens incarcerated based solely on ethnic origin and the resurgence of legislation targeting women, religious minorities, BIPOC, and LGBTQIA individuals.&160;Born book, Born Equal contains a stunning reproduction of Maida&8217;s 2018 book as well as a record of Maida&8217;s 2020 project,&160;Printed Media x Printed Justice: Exhibition-in-a-Box, in which Maida mailed political posters to influential art institutions including New York&8217;s Museum of Modern Art, when the urgency of the imminent 2020 Presidential election and the limitations of the COVID-19 pandemic made post the most effective way to get the the project in curators&8217; hands.