Osamu James Nakagawa
Kai: 廻 Following the Cycle of Life
Sep 4 - 27 , 2025
Kai questions the link between the self, parent, and child as it relates to my family’s heritage and histories. It concerns itself with finding points of connection and disconnection between actual and constructed memories on both cultural and familial levels.
I began this series in 1998 when I found out my father was dying of cancer. I started to photograph my father as a way to understand and accept his illness and progression towards the end of his life. At that time, my wife was also pregnant with our daughter. Through photography, I began to understand the cyclical nature of life and death.
Over the past twenty years since starting this series, I have continued to photograph my family members, including my mother, who passed away twelve years ago. My mother lived alone for twelve years in Japan, following my father’s passing. As she continued to age, we started to notice her physical and mental fragility, and we made the decision to place her into an assisted care facility in Tokyo. She found adapting to her new environment was a difficult process, and the distance between the family scattered across the globe put additional strain on us. Because of these changes, Kai evolved to focus on my mother as she transitioned towards the end of her life.
Through the process of photographing, I have noticed other transitions in my family life, such as my daughter starting to mature. At the beginning of the series, she had not yet been born, and now she is a young woman.
Kai series weaves images that connect generations. The core message in this body of work is universal. It is about family, time, and connection to our ancestors. Kai is the circle that keeps turning.
As I turn sixty-three, I am nearing the age my father was when he passed away. When I look at myself in the mirror every morning, I see him. As I reflect on this work, I only realized how fast time has cycled. I observed my family go through different stages of life, yet I recognize now that Iam no longer an observer. I am a part of this cycle.
In-Person Artist Talk
Sat, Sep 6 at 2 PM
Osamu James Nakagawa (Japanese American, b. 1962, he/him) was born in New York City and raised in Tokyo. He returned to the United States, moving 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 Master of Fine Arts from the University of Houston in 1993. Currently, Mr. Nakagawa is a Distinguished Professor and the Ruth N. Halls Professor of Photography at Indiana University. He lives and works in Bloomington, Indiana. Nakagawa is a recipient of the 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship, the 2010 Higashikawa New Photographer of the Year, and the 2015 Sagamihara Photographer of the Year in Japan. Nakagawa’s work has been exhibited internationally, solo exhibitions include Witness Trees, PGI, Tokyo; OKINAWA TRILOGY: Osamu James Nakagawa, Kyoto University of the Arts; GAMA Caves, SepiaEYE, New York; Banta: Stained Memory, Sakima Art Museum, Okinawa, Japan; Course: Banta, SEPIA International Inc., New York, NY, and others.
Selected group shows include – Triennial of Photography Hamburg 2022: Currency: Photography Beyond Capture, Deichtorhallen, Hamburg(2022); Photography to End All Photography, Brandts Museum, Denmark(2018); A Shared Elegy: Emmet Gowin, Elijah Gowin, Takayuki Ogawa, James Nakagawa, Grunwald Gallery of Art, Indiana University(2017); The Photograph: What You See & What You Don't #02, Tokyo University of Arts(2015); Infinite Pulse: Photography in Time, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston(2016); After Photoshop: Manipulated Photography in the Digital Age, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York(2012); Traces and Omens, 2005 Noorderlicht Photofestival, Netherlands, Contemporary American Photography, 7 International Fototage 2005, Germany; Cuenca, Ecuador Bienal '98: Borderline Figuration; Medialogue-Photography in Contemporary Japanese Art '98, Tokyo Photographic Arts Museum.
His work is included in numerous public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art; George Eastman Museum; Tokyo Photographic Arts Museum; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Sakima Art Museum, Okinawa; The Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Peabody Essex Museum, Grand Rapid Museum of Art and others. Nakagawa’s monograph GAMA Caves is available through Akaaka Art Publisher in Kyoto, Japan.