Trace, on view at Pictura Gallery from September 4 to October 30, 2026, presents a new photographic series by Osamu James Nakagawa that connects his present-day experience as a Japanese-American with past generations. In 2022, Nakagawa began a pilgrimage of 24,888 miles to visit the sites of every incarceration camp established after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 in February 1942, resulting in the forcible incarceration of approximately 125,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans, mainly in camps in the arid American West. The exhibition opens with a reception and artist talk on Friday, September 4, from 5 to 8 pm at 202 South Rogers Street in Bloomington, Indiana.
Two months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, families were made to evacuate to isolated internment camps with no rights to appeal the incarceration, without any legal charge. They suffered the dual trauma of losing their land, homes, and businesses while being isolated in the harsh environment of the remote camps at the hand of their own government. In an atmosphere of fear over national security and deep-seated anti-Asian racism, America betrayed its own citizens. Nakagawa, born in New York City in 1962 and raised in Tokyo, returned to the United States at age 15. In 2020, on the cusp of his 60th birthday, the turmoil of the pandemic, the killing of George Floyd, and the increased anti-Asian hate crimes during the first Trump presidency were painful reminders of America's deeply ingrained systemic racism. As a Japanese-American, he has felt like an outsider in both cultures.
Trace combines photographs taken at the sites of the incarceration camps with cyanotype photograms of remnants and frottage prints of the memorials. Using diptychs, Nakagawa pairs the past and the present, flattening the boundaries between them. The series seeks to reveal what can't be seen anymore, things that happened eighty years ago and have been quietly buried. Through a direct and immersive process, using actual objects and surfaces from the sites, Nakagawa unearths this history of forced incarceration. He started by making cyanotype photograms of objects he found at the sites: nails, barbed wire, broken glass, rusted cans. He even made film from frottage rubbings of the memorials and used those in the cyanotypes. In taking the time to look more deeply at the vast and isolated landscape in front of him, the shadows gave him access to the boundaries between past and present, both metaphorically and experientially.
Nakagawa is the Distinguished Professor and the Ruth N. Halls Professor of Photography at Indiana University, where he directs the Center for Integrative Photographic Studies. He is a recipient of the 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship, the 2010 Higashikawa New Photographer of the Year, and the 2015 Sagamihara Photographer of the Year in Japan. His work has been exhibited internationally, with solo exhibitions at PGI Tokyo, Kyoto University of the Arts, Sepia EYE New York, and Sakima Art Museum in Okinawa. His work is included in numerous public collections including the George Eastman Museum and the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum. Trace is part of a trilogy called American Truths, which also includes the series IF - NOW and Witness Trees. The exhibition remains on view through October 30, offering visitors a chance to encounter work that visualizes the past and the still-existing tension between what happened and what is happening now.
Image: © Osamu James Nakagawa
Instagram 
Facebook 
Pinterest 
X / Twitter 