For the European Month of Photography in Paris, the Galerie Catherine et André Hug is presenting Odyssey by Miki Nitadori. By superimposing family photographs on printed fabrics, the artist has produced a beautiful, graphic work resurrecting the history of Japanese immigrants in Hawaii, where she spent her childhood.
For the last 15 years, I have been working on Japanese- Americans (and more recently with the new multi-cultural generations) in Maui, Hawaii where I grew up as a child. My last work is based on a suitcase full of photographs that had been thrown away by a Japanese- American family in Lahaina, then saved and brought back to Paris by a Frenchman, Thomas Hardy.
In the 2000s,Thomas came to my atelier where he saw a photograph of the sugar factory in Lahaina. After this encounter, he invited me to see the photographs he had brought back. A couple of years later we met again by chance in a travel agency where he decided to give me these photographs. Then last year, I was invited to exhibit at Maui arts & cultural center from May 26. Everything happened as if these photographs really needed to go back to where they came from. To me this Odyssey of the photographs in the suitcase carries the message from the past generations to the present generations: Do not forget your ancestors and where you are coming from.
This subject is currently a reality for a small island in the pacific but in 50 years or so they will be the reality for many countries in the world.
Through this exhibition, I wish that the audience will be able to enjoy the images of people of yesterday and today and give another thought and light to the “ordinary” photographs that many family have (photos which may be sleeping in the dark corner of every household right now) and revalue their own cultural heritage.
The main works I present in the exhibition are Japanese-American group photographs from the beginning of the 19th century to the 1950s. These photographs were scanned, enlarged and manually transferred onto printed fabrics. Printed fabrics represents to me a diversity of cultural, traditional and symbolic patterns that reflects the environment and community.
Many people think I can do the transfer digitally by inkjet print, which is not the case. The time and physical endurance gives me further understanding of the original photographs which is not possible to experience with digital print. The process makes the works more precious as they take a long time to print and are all unique pieces.”
Miki Nitadori
EXHIBITION
Galerie Catherine et André Hug
2 rue de l’Echaudé/40 rue de Seine
75006 Paris
November 6th-19th 2014
http://www.galeriehug.com
CONTRIBUTOR
Severine Morel
[email protected]
