Wendy Tanaka is a fine art portrait photographer whose work focuses on social diversity. She has recently begun a personal journey to rediscover her Japanese heritage. A fourth generation Japanese Canadian, Wendy’s family experienced the government-enforced dispersal from the West Coast and the subsequent assimilation into broader Canadian society. Through photographic portraits and personal narratives, Wendy expresses her family’s enduring connection to their Japanese roots. Her current photographic series, Japanese Connection Stories, is on display at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre through March 2026.

This photographic collection explores Tanaka’s family’s identification with and connection to their Japanese heritage. Following the government-enforced Evacuation of Japanese Canadians from the West Coast during World War II, many displaced families eventually assimilated into Canadian society, relinquishing much of their cultural identity to avoid further persecution. As a fourth-generation descendant of the Evacuation, Tanaka has only recently begun to explore her heritage. To begin this journey, she reached out to relatives across six generations, asking about their connection to their heritage — how they identify as Japanese Canadians, and what continues to link them to their roots. Tanaka captures her family members in photographic portraits accompanied by objects that symbolize their bonds. While traditional heritage portraiture often ties cultural identity to heirlooms, Tanaka’s family’s connections are represented through new acquisitions, as many of their belongings were lost to dispossession during the Evacuation. To deepen the narrative, Tanaka also invited family members to express their connections in their own words. This personal photographic collection offered Tanaka’s family an opportunity to reflect on their ties to Japanese heritage, revealing connections that might otherwise have remained unspoken. Through this work, Tanaka hopes to inspire others to rediscover their own family roots and reflect on how heritage continues to shape identity today.