Images that Occupy the paradoxical place between memory and documents

Images that Occupy the paradoxical place between memory and documents


Curated by fellow ICP-Bard MFA alum Nandita Raman, “I need my memories. They are my documents.” is a group exhibition which features work by Pradeep Dalal, Shambhavi Kaul, Osamu James Nakagawa, Neal Oshima, and Vivan Sundaram. On view now through Saturday, October 31, 2015 with a curator talk at 2pm ET at sepiaEYE Gallery in NYC.
Below I’ve highlighted the work of three artists in the exhibition along with text from sepiaEYE explaining the genesis and processes used to create their work and including links to interviews with each artist by the curator.
Neal Oshima, Saya Series, Number 12, 1998-1999, Vandyke Brown Kallitype/Photogram, 26 x 48.5″

Neal Oshima’s Barot/ Saya series uses a traditional shirt, baro, worn by Filipino women with a skirt, saya. These garments, made from hand woven fibers like banana and pineapple plants, were popular in the period preceding the arrival of the Americans in the 19th Century. Oshima culled them from several textile collections, selecting pieces that carried a sense of the original owner of the garments. By placing the object between the light source and the paper, Oshima retains the original scale of the baro. He then combines this objective view of this symbol of Filipino women, with the imperfections of the archaic Kallitype process, which uses hand coated light sensitive paper.
Read Nandita Raman’s interview with Neal Oshima.
Castle, Ma: Between the Past. © Osamu James Nakagawa.

Like the simultaneous opaqueness and translucency of Oshima’s photograms, Osamu James Nakagawa brings together the contrary moments of the past and the present into his triptychs and collages. In Ma: Between the Past Nakagawa juxtaposes his images of Japan and the United States with his father’s and grandfather’s photographs and film strips that were handed down in a suitcase by his father. The repetition of some motifs, like the mountain that is multiplied by its reflection in water and lingers on the neighboring image’s wallpaper, brings attention to movement and displacement. Nakagawa says, “I began to question my own past, not only my memory, but also the unfamiliar past that I had inherited. This series searches for a link to my past and its future passage to my daughter.”

Read Raman’s interview with Osamu James Nakagawa.

Pradeep Dalal, Go West (Baldwin), 2006-11, Archival Digital C-Print, 30 x 40″

“I use my fingers, palms, knuckles, and arms to grab, place, hold, nudge, jog, sweep, and shake the different components of the photomontage” says Pradeep Dalal, explaining the process of creating his photographic collages, Go West. This DJ-like use of disparate materials on a flatbed scanner erects columns of visual slivers that dissolve into one another after a momentary pause. The use of family snapshots, music album covers, textiles, embroidery, prints of palm trees and flowers in the construction of the collage evokes a tactile experience, and reveals how the process of recollection stitches and layers dissonant moments from the past.

Read Raman’s interview with Pradeep Dalal.
_________________________________________________________________________________

Dodge & Burn is a blog dedicated to documenting a more inclusive history of photography and supporting the work of photographers of color with photographer interviews.

This blog is published by visual artist and writer, Qiana Mestrich. For regular updates on diversity in photography history, follow Qiana on Twitter @mestrich, Like the Dodge & Burn Blog page on Facebook or subscribe to Dodge & Burn by email.

+ There are no comments

Add yours