Osamu James Nakagawa (born 1962) is a Japanese-American photographer.Cookman, Claude. "Kai: Following the Cycle of Life in Osamu James Nakagawa’s family photographs," Exposure, Society for Photographic Education, Spring 2017. Retrieved July 29, 2021.Kraft, Coralie. "Kai: Following the Cycle of Life," Lens Culture, 2017. Retrieved July 29, 2021. He is known for multiple, cross-cultural series exploring geopolitical landscape, family, memory and personal identity, including his own transnational experience.Loke, Margaret. "Exploring Alienation Through Windows, Bare Trees and Murky Enigmas," The New York Times, February 16, 2001, p. E40. Retrieved July 29, 2021.Morgan, Robert C. "Miyako Ishiuchi and Osamu James Nakagawa," ARTnews, June, 2003.Ksander, Yael. "Focus on a Tragic Landscape: Guggenheim Fellow Osamu James Nakagawa," Indiana Public Media, May 5, 2009. Retrieved July 29, 2021.Teicher, Jordan G. "Japan’s Mysterious and Beautiful Caves," Slate, May 18, 2014. Retrieved July 29, 2021. He initially gained notice as an early digital photographer, however his work has ranged between digital color and black-and-white imagery, and computer-manipulated collage, traditional "straight" photography and large photographic installation.Dam, Julie K.L. and Emily Michell, Stacy Perman. "Virtual Light Shines in the Darkroom, Metamorphoses: Fashion Institute of Technology, New York City," Time Magazine International edition, September 26, 1994, p. 62.Kusumoto, Aki. "Osamu James Nakagawa interview," Photography Annual 2011, Nippon Camera, Japan.The Eye of Photography. "Osamu James Nakagawa’s touching family diary," April 23, 2018. Retrieved July 30, 2021. Writers such as curator Anne Wilkes Tucker describe his work as challenging, layered and in a poetic vein, rather than documentary or narrative in nature.Tucker, Anne Wilkes. "Osamu James Nakagawa," Contact Sheet: The Light Work Annual 2003, Syracuse, NY: Light Work, 2003. Retrieved July 30, 2021.
Nakagawa has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and awards from the cities of Higashikawa and Sagamihara in Japan, among others. He has exhibited internationally at venues including the Metropolitan Museum of Art,Cattan, Dani. "Osamu James Nakagawa: The Banta Ciffs, at the MET," En Foco, October 24, 2012. Tokyo Photographic Art Museum,Hiraki, Osamu. "The 1st Tokyo International Photo-Biennale," Asahi Camera, June 1995.Tokyo Art Beat. "From the Cave, Tokyo Photographic Art Museum", 2019. Retrieved July 30, 2021. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston,Klaasmeyer, Kelly. "War/Photography," Houston Press, January 9, 2013. Retrieved July 30, 2021. and Sakima Art Museum in Japan.Lens Culture. About Osamu James Nakagawa. Retrieved July 29, 2021. His work belongs to the public collections of those museums and others, including the Museum of Contemporary Photography and George Eastman Museum.The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Okinawa 001, 2008, Osamu James Nakagawa, Collection. Retrieved July 30, 2021.Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Osamu James Nakagawa, People. Retrieved July 30, 2021.Museum of Contemporary Photography. End of the Day, from the "Ma" series, Objects. Retrieved July 30, 2021.George Eastman Museum. Gas Mask, Osamu James Nakagawa, Objects. Retrieved July 30, 2021. Nakagawa is a professor of photography at Indiana University and lives and works in Bloomington, Indiana.John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Osamu James Nakagawa, Fellows. Retrieved July 29, 2021.Indiana University. Osamu James Nakagawa, Faculty. Retrieved July 30, 2021.
Early life and education Nakagawa was born in 1962 in New York City to Japanese-born parents. He was raised in Tokyo until age 15, when his father's work took the family to Houston, Texas.Museum of Contemporary Photography. Osamu James Nakagawa, Collection. Retrieved July 30, 2021. After he completed high school, his parents returned to Japan, but Nakagawa remained in Houston, earning a BA in studio art from St. Thomas University in 1986. He worked in Tokyo for two years as a commercial and editorial photography assistant, before returning to the U.S. to study photography at the University of Houston (MFA, 1993). In 1998, he moved to Indiana with wife and daughter, joining the School of Art, Architecture + Design at Indiana University, where he is the Ruth N. Halls distinguished professor of photography and director of the Center for Integrative Photographic Studies.
Exhibitions Nakagawa received early attention for his work in digital photography (then in its pre-Photoshop infancy) through the exhibitions and publications "Metamorphoses: Photography in the Electronic Age" (1994–9, Fashion Institute of Technology; Philadelphia Museum of Art),Sozanski, Edward F. "Art Museum exhibit examines photographs in computer age," The Philadelphia Inquirer, July 7, 1996.Batchen, Geoffrey. Metamorphoses: Photography in the Electronic Age, New York: Aperture Foundation, 1994. Retrieved August 4, 2021. "Picturing Asia" (1994–5, Houston Center for Photography),Goldberg, Vicki. "From Diversity Come Struggles," The New York Times, November 27, 1994, Sect. 2, p. 39. Retrieved July 29, 2021.Bayliss, Sarah. "Picturing Asia America," World Art, January 1995.Daniel, Mike. "Photographs develop theme of dual identity, Picturing Asia America: Communities, Culture, Difference," Dallas Morning News, June 21, 1996.Chau, Monica. Picturing Asia America: Communities, Culture, Difference, Houston: Houston Center for Photography, 1994. Retrieved August 4, 2021. and "Field of Vision" (1998, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston).Johnson, Patricia C. "Gulf Coast Visions, Photographers Put Painter's Touch to Prints," Houston Chronicle, March 11, 1998.Blakemore, Amy (et al). Field of Vision, Houston: Contemporary Arts Museum, 1998. Retrieved August 4, 2021. A 1994 Time review of the "Metamorphoses" show—one of the first devoted to digital photography—suggested that work such as Nakagawa's challenged and subverted long-held myths about the truth of photography.
Nakagawa's later exhibitions were held at sepiaEYE in New York (2000–18), PGI in Tokyo (2014, 2018) and Kyoto University of the Arts (2014), among others.Gauss, Daniel. "'Gama Caves' Photos by Osamu James Nakagawa at sepiaEYE," Arte Fuse, April 24, 2014.Tokyo Art Beat. "Osamu James Nakagawa 'Eclipse'", 2018. Retrieved July 30, 2021.Hayashida, Arata. "Osamu James Nakagawa Exhibition at the Kyoto University of Art and Design," Asahi Camera Magazine, January 2014. He was also included in the shows "After Photoshop: Manipulated Photography in the Digital Age" (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2012), "War/Photography: Photographs of Armed Conflict and its Aftermath," (Museum of Fine Arts Houston; Brooklyn Museum, 2012–4), and “From the Cave” (Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, 2018).The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "After Photoshop: Manipulated Photography in the Digital Age," Exhibitions. Retrieved July 30, 2021.
Work and reception Critics have identified two key strains in Nakagawa's practice that sometimes intersect, one personal and introspective and the other socio-political and historical in focus.Raman, Nandita. "Osamu James Nakagawa," International Center of Photography, October 30, 2015. Retrieved July 30, 2021. The former strain includes his family-related "Kai" and "Ma" works and early "Mado" series; the latter strain includes the U.S.-focused "Drive-In Theater" and "Eclipse" works and his multiple series examining the history of Okinawa, his wife's native region, which he considers an inherited "third culture."Ehmke, Ronald. "Images of the Link Between Two Worlds," The Buffalo News, September 25, 1997. Retrieved July 30, 2021.Passage. "Eclipse, Osamu James Nakagawa," Issue 4, 2018. Retrieved July 29, 2021.Machida, Margo L. "Pacific Itineraries: Islands and Oceanic Imaginaries in Contemporary Asian American Art," Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas, Vol. 3, 2017, p. 9–34.
Early series
Nakagawa's "Mado" (window) series (1988–2000) consisted of 4-by-5-inch black-and-white minimalist prints of off-kilter perspectives through screens and delicate, abstract patterns formed by raindrops and condensation. The New York Times described them as wistful views "of a perpetual outsider" inviting close attention to their "calligraphic simplicity." His "Drive-In Theater" and "Billboard" series (1992–7) employed an entirely different mode, dissecting the American dream by digitally compositing jarring images (protests, parades, border crossings, KKK demonstrations) of social and racial injustices on to the derelict screens of once-iconic drive-in theaters and billboards he photographed. Critics have described them as façades or projections expressing Nakagawa's mixed feelings about the U.S. while also spotlighting concealed or obfuscated historical issues and fabricated national mythologies (e.g., American Indian Flag, 1992; Windshield Washer, 1996).
In the wake of the 2016 American election, Nakagawa revisited those works in a new series, "Eclipse" (2018– ), which consisted of dark gray-toned prints of abandoned screens (from old negatives and newly photographed scenes) that he left empty as blank, dystopian monuments in disorienting Midwest landscapes.Warner, Marigold. "Kyotographie 2019: VIBE," 1854, March 19, 2019. Retrieved July 29, 2021. Writers suggest that the images—which employ a unique printing process offering exceptional sharpness and tonality—seem to merge night and day, positive and negative, present and future in contrast to the polarized, black-and-white political climate in which they were produced.
"Kai" and "Ma" series Nakagawa's "Kai, Following the Cycle of Life" and "Ma, Between the Past" series focus on themes of family, memory, intergenerational connection and change, and loss.The New York Times. "Art Listings," January 26, 2003. Retrieved July 29, 2021. The "Kai" (Japanese for cycle) works embody the Buddhist idea of each moment's existence occurring within an everchanging cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth.Goldberg, Vicki. "The Plain Old Still Camera Is Still in the Forefront," The New York Times, April 30, 2000, Sect. 2, p. 21. Retrieved July 29, 2021. He began them during a period of swift change in his life, when he simultaneously confronted his father's terminal cancer and the impending birth of his daughter. Seeking to freeze individual moments and memories—the most basic function of photography—he produced the "Kai I" images (1998–2005) using a traditional black-and-white, silver gelatin process. Writers characterized the square-format series by its subtle tonal values, poetic quality and oblique, symbolic vision; ARTnews critic Robert C. Morgan described Nakagawa's approach to the difficult subject "startling, convincing, and ultimately, redeeming." The series includes a scene of Nakagawa's daughter surrounded by stuffed toys with the shadows of her parents bowing toward her (Morning Light, Bloomington, 1999) and images of chest X-rays, ultrasounds, and his father before and after receiving chemotherapy (Hot Springs, Hakone, Japan, Summer 1998). Kai, Ninomiya (1998) represents three generations, depicting Tomoko standing on a beach holding their daughter with a funeral portrait of Nakagawa's father balanced against her hip.
In 2010, as his mother’s health began to decline, Nakagawa started the "Kai II" series, which he photographed in digital color, allowing him to develop a subdued, pastel palette with a more feminine quality. The series depicts his wife and daughter, but primarily, his mother, with images of her passage through medical care, her belongings (perfume, nylons, empty walker washed by the Ninomiya surf), and finally, her hand in Nakagawa's just prior to death.