documented

This series merges two photographic styles important to immigrant experience: the photo as “proof of identity” (green card, “real ID,” passport) and the family album as a reliquary of memories, loss, love, and dreams. Nobuo came to the US in the early 1970s on a student visa, eventually got a green card, became a citizen, and had a forty-year career as a college professor. I took two portraits of him at age 81, one facing forward and one backward. On these I superimposed scans of his childhood photos and documents from the late 1940s to mid-1950s. These were the years of the American Occupation when Japan became a liberal democracy modeled on the United States. The series is a response to recent political rhetoric in the US against immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country.”

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earth + light