New Orleans Gambit

Review: ‘Balancing Cultures’

Eric Bookhardt

Aug 6, 2018

Jerry Takigawa’s vintage Japanese American family photographs at New Orleans Photo Alliance, taken before over 100,000 mostly innocent American residents were forcibly detained in World War II internment camps for “security” reasons, remind us that ethnic hysteria can erupt suddenly. Here, the contrast between original images of smiling Japanese Americans, re-photographed to include internment ID cards and racist relics like “Jap Hunting Licenses,” is starkly chilling. They also are meditative in a way that penetrates beyond the anger that blatant injustice provokes, inviting us to look more deeply into the mysterious inner darkness that remains a part of the human condition even in the most ostensibly “advanced” societies.