Osamu James Nakagawa

　　Ma - between the past
　　2003 - present

　　A day before my father was hospitalized for his cancer in Tokyo, he brought me a suitcase filled with
　　family mementos. Looking back, I think it was important for him to hand down the visual history of our
　　family to the next generation.
　　Two months later, my daughter was born, then my father passed away......
　　The suitcase sat untouched in my studio for years.

　　Finally I had the courage to open my father's memory box and looked at the old photographs and films
　　that he had kept. Although all the contents of his suitcase contained familly mementos, some of the
　　images were familiar to me but many other images were ones that I had never seen. I began to question
　　my own past, not only my memory, but also the unfamiliar past that I had inherited. How can I make
　　connections between the images that I had photographed and the images in my father's memory box?
　　Ma - between the past came out of this question. This series searches for a link to my past and its future
　　passage to my daughter.

　　The digital image were composed with my grandfather's archives and my father's 8mm filmstrips that
　　he took in New York and Los Angeles from 1957 to 1962. In the triptychs, I juxtaposed imaget that I had
　　taken in Japan and the United States with the archval images from my father's suitcase.

　　As a series the work conveys my sense of traverse - Ma - crossing over the gaps that exist between here
　　and there, now and then, triggering one to visualize their own past.

　　Osamu James Nakagawa
　　1962　New York, New York

　　Education & Experience:
　　Osamu James Nakagawa was born in New York City; raised in Tokyo, Japan and returned to Houston,
　　Texas at the age of 15. He received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of St. Thomas Houston in
　　1986 and a Mather of Fine Arts from the University of Huston in 1993. Currently, he is an assitant
　　professor at the Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. Nakagawa's work is shown internationally,
　　the exhibitions inclde a solo exhibition, Ma-between the past, McMurtrey Gallery, Houston, Texas; kai:
　　Osamu Jemes Nakagawa, SEPIA Internationl Inc, New York, NY, Mado: '89-'99, at the Houston Center
　　for Photography. The selected group shows includes Cross-Cultural Voices II: Between Memories,
　　Stephen Gang Gallery, New York, Cuenca, Ecuador Bienal '98: Borderline Figuration; Medialogue,
　　Photography in Contemporary Art '98,Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography; Field of Vision:
　　Five Gulf Coast Photographers, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston. His work has been published and
　　reviewed in New York Times; Time Magazine; Village Voice; Aperture: Metamorphose; Edition
　　Stemmle: Waterproof; Enfoco: Nueva Luz; and others. He has been teaching workshops at the
　　International Center for Photography in NY since 1999. Nakagawa received grants and fellowship from
　　the Santa Fe Center for Visual Arts; Indiana Arts Commission; The Light Work, Syracuse, NY; The
　　Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Co; Houston Center for Photography; the American Photography Institute,
　　New York City; Cultural Arts of Houston/ Harris County. His work is in the permanent collection of the
　　International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House; Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of
　　Photography; Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts, Japan; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Art
　　Museum of South Texas, Copus Christi; and the University of Houston. He is represented by SEPIA
　　International Inc. in New York City and McMurtrey Gallery in Houston.

　　OSAMU JAMES NAKAGAWA is a photo artist using both conventional photography and digiral media. His
　　work has proceeded from a visual diary pursuing questions of self-identity to lager scale issues of
　　ethnicity in the generational history of himself and his family. His work also challenges the viewer to
　　visualize their own past. He exhibits internationally and is a professor at the University of Indiana.