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Osamu James Nakagawa’s touching family diary

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Kai Series is Osamu James Nakagawa’s ongoing, now twenty-year long exploration and visual meditation on the circular nature of change within the family. Presented both as a diary of his immediate relatives and as a shared humanistic narrative, the series resonates with a deeply felt emotional gravity.

Nakagawa began the project in 1998 during a challenging time in his life, when his father was diagnosed with cancer and his wife Tomoko was pregnant with their daughter, Hikari. In Nakagawa’s words: “Photographing became a way for me to ‘slow down’ and question the changes that were bringing a different rhythm to my life. I began to realize the importance of preserving and creating memories by constructing visual connections and relationships between my family members. As I observe my daughter grow, I have become interested in questioning the link between the self, parent, and child. Through this cycle of age, I began to recognize time as being circular where the beginning and end can occur simultaneously. Kai is the circle that keeps turning.”

In 2010, as his mother’s health began to decline and his daughter graduated high school, Nakagawa returned to his camera to process another difficult period in the same way as before. Continuing to document the family in square format but now in digital color, his focus was primarily on the intersection of mother at the end of her life as his daughter, her granddaughter, was moving away to college. The color photographs echo the early black-and-white familial scenes: beautifully composed, relatable, tender. We see Hikari now as a young woman with milestones being documented (graduation, prom) alongside Nakagawa’s mother and an inventory of her life: a tangle of nylons spread on bed sheets, the fading yet direct gaze of her eye, and the hands that once, as a young mother, held the photographer.

The images in Kai create a culturally transcendent conversation about the intimate relationships between generations, the layers of connection and independence, the changing of roles from child to caretaker, whilst being a poignant recognition of individual histories and ancestors.

 

Osamu James Nakagawa, Kai Series
March 30 – May 5, 2018
sepiaEYE
547 West 27th Street, #608
New York, NY 10001
USA

www.sepiaeye.com

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