FAR

This September, Pictura presents Trace, a new photographic series by longtime Bloomington treasure Osamu James Nakagawa, distinguished Professor of Photography at Indiana University. The project connects Nakagawa’s present day experience as a Japanese-American with past generations. In 2022, he began a 25,000 mile pilgrimage from Bloomington to visit the sites of Japanese-American incarceration camps. Trace combines photographs taken at these sites with photograms of found objects and rubbings of the memorials.

Using diptychs, Nakagawa pairs the past and the present, flattening the boundaries between them. Trace seeks to reveal what can’t be seen anymore, things that happened eighty years ago and have been quietly buried. Through a direct and immersive process, using actual objects and surfaces from the sites, Nakagawa unearths this all but forgotten history of forced incarceration.

Trace opens at Pictura Gallery on Friday September 4th 5-8pm, and will be on view until October 30th.

Artist Bio
Osamu James Nakagawa was born in New York City in 1962, raised in Tokyo, and then returned to the US at the age of 15. He is the Distinguished Professor and the Ruth N. Halls Professor of Photography at Indiana University. Nakagawa is a recipient of the 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship, the 2010 Higashikawa New Photographer of the Year and 2015 Sagamihara Photographer of the Year in Japan.

Nakagawa’s work has been exhibited internationally, selected solo exhibitions include PGI, Tokyo; Kyoto University of the Arts; Sepia EYE, New York; Sakima Art Museum, Okinawa, Japan; and others. Group shows include A Shared Elegy with Emmet Gowin, Elijah Gowin; After Photoshop, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. His work is included in numerous public collections, including George Eastman Museum; Tokyo Metropolitan Museum