Monterey County Herald
POLLUTION AS PALETTE
June 8, 2012
by Marcos Cabrera
Fine art photographer Jerry Takigawa’s new exhibit attempts to turn environmental tragedy into beautiful art. “False Food,” Takigawa’s statement on the dangers of plastics in the ocean, opens Friday at the Carl Cherry Center for the Arts in Carmel.
The artist will be present for a reception starting at 5 p.m. Takigawa is an award-winning Peninsula photographer and designer known for his rich color photography. For “False Food, ” he focused his lens on subtle images from his own collection, staged with a twist—he added plastic artifacts retrieved from the remains of albatross on Midway Island and the Pacific gyre.
The exhibit’s name reflects the situation on both remote ocean locales, where large amounts of discarded plastic have gathered to wreak ecological havoc. Marine animals that mistakenly feast on the plastic “false food” often meet an untimely demise.
To illustrate the situation, Takigawa used a backhanded approach, incorporating the deadly plastic into his own work with a seamless touch.
The exhibit images are striking—an antique Japanese scroll with a hand-drawn illustration of a geisha is decorated with jagged pieces of plastic pulled from deep in the ocean. In another photo, the opened page of an aged Japanese travel book, featuring immaculate black script, is contrasted by colorful shards of worn plastic. The artifacts are arranged symmetrically to mirror the script.
Takigawa creatively placed the pieces of plastic over more than a dozen images and shot the arrangements mostly in natural light. The results are often lush and soft, belying the harsh nature of the found materials used in the exhibit.
“The driving thing is wanting to create something beautiful. But it’s also creating something beautiful, I realize in this case, out of elements that are part of a real tragic situation,” said Takigawa. “So to me, when I’m making the work, I just think of (the plastic) as little objects and color and things. I don’t think about them for what they’ve done, but I know that what I’m creating in the end has kind of both stories going on. There’s a beauty, there’s harmony and there’s kind of a peacefulness. But there’s also a story you can tell from underneath.”
Takigawa said it’s similar to art photography he’s admired that depict live tragedies.
“When you do art, in a way you try to tell that story, or you’re able to help people understand the situation better,” he said. “You can give people a lot of information and facts about what happened, but it doesn’t make them want to change or do something about it. It’s just more information. You can inspire people with art to want to do something.” Takigawa said the Monterey Bay Aquarium donated the ocean artifacts.
A June 22 reception features aquarium climate change specialist Sarah-Mae Nelson, who will share ways to reduce plastic for ocean conservation. Takigawa said 10 percent of the exhibit’s original print sales will be donated to the aquarium’s education programs. It’s part of Takigawa’s gesture to bring awareness to the fight against plastics, along with his exhibit.
“I’ve always wanted to do work that was unique and original. At the same time, I wanted to do work that was bringing people together in a sense,” he said. “It’s like taking polar opposites and making something new that shows the world you can be both an individual and a group and they can exist somehow. That’s underlying all this other stuff.”
