MA - BETWEEN THE PAST (2003-2005)
A suitcase stood for years in the studio of James Nakagawa. His father had given him the suitcase shortly before he died. When he eventually gathered the courage to open it, he found a collection of films and photographs that his father and grandfather had made during their lives. Nakagawa interwove this material with photographs that he himself made over the course of time, to produce a visual family history spanning three generations. He called the work MA, after a Japanese term for the space between two entities – not only for the gulf between past and present, but also because of the division of his family history between America and Japan.
