Dayo Press
“The poetic photos by Jerry Takigawa on the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII collected in Balancing Cultures moved me profoundly. So melancholy, so personal, and so deeply felt…like ghostly memories that haunt America’s conscience.”
—George Takei, Actor, Author, Activist
“On the surface, Balancing Cultures by Jerry Takigawa is a quiet account of one American Japanese family’s experience of US governmental racism—cruelly inflicted upon its very own citizens during WWII. The narrative presents a highly personal view of an undeniably dark period in American history, and yet the photographs are so visually poetic that the seduction almost belies their message. This dichotomy is important. It points to the fragility of memory, of civic duty and pride, and to the stated accounts of the past as truths. Photography’s role in historiography is a powerful one, and Balancing Cultures will surely take its rightful place as a valuable document in this context.”
—Debra Klomp Ching, Co-owner, Klompching Gallery, New York
“This powerful collection allows for a deeper understanding of how the past informs the future, in particular a past that is often hidden from the next generations. Balancing Cultures is an important historical presentation of American racism focused on Japanese families, but it is also a tribute to art as a form of reconciliation and documentation.”
—Aline Smithson, Founder, Lenscratch
“There are not too many storytellers who can bring awareness of crimes against humanity and the earth we inhabit, without baring teeth. Jerry Takigawa does just that. He guides us to the truth with eloquent imagery first, then invites us to dive deeper into the cues and juxtapositions he’s left us in the photographs.”
—Paula Tognarelli, Executive Director and Curator, Griffin Museum of Photography, Boston
“It’s the weight of the artifacts that crushes me. These pieces of the past, so fragile and small—an identity card, a wooden tile, a pine needle, a newspaper scrap, a pebble—but with enough heft to hold down the heartbreaking history of Jerry Takigawa’s family. It is the weight of these objects and what they represent that breaks me, the unfairness, the cruelty, the ill treatment, only inflicted because of fear. As a Japanese American, Takigawa tells the story of his family’s experiences in a U.S. concentration camp through his photographs. Or more precisely, through the arrangement of the smallest objects with the most potent force, laid upon the blurred, black and white memories of his history. They are unforgettable.”
—Ann Jastrab, Executive Director, Center for Photographic Art, Carmel
“Unlike many other artists utilizing vernacular photography, Jerry Takigawa’s work unearths family history and simultaneously uncovers social histories too often forgotten. Every carefully considered element in the images speaks to the workings of memory, history, and family, in a manner that is both distinctly personal and all too familiar.”
—Lisa Volpe, Associate Curator, Museum of Fine Art Houston
“Profound and unforgettable. Balancing Cultures masterfully interweaves narrative, memory and image to shine the light of history on prejudice, discrimination, and the unfinished business of racial justice in America. Powerfully and movingly told, Jerry Takigawa traces his family’s painful history of forced removal, dispossession, and incarceration along with over 120,000 Japanese Americans in America’s concentration camps.”
—Ann Burroughs, President and CEO, Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles
“Jerry Takigawa’s work has an illustrative tension that is powerful—our minds have to work hard to reconcile the uncomfortable relationship between the beauty in his images (a rich color palette, elegant family photos, elements of nature) and the visual symbols of structural racism (internment camp documentation, derogatory historical artifacts, game-board pieces spelling out heuristic phrases). It is within this tension that the work is reminding—no, urging—us to recognize the omnipresent danger of exclusionary ideologies.”
—Laura Moya, Director, Photolucida, Portland
