installation

© kjm

The opening of the Mary L. Nohl Fellowship show went really well last week, with a large and lively crowd in attendance. The catalog looks great - Karin Higa of the National Japanese American Museum in L.A. was kind enough to write an essay about the Camp Home work - you can read it here.

And I was really happy with the way the installation turned out (photographed today, while my mom looked at the work, above), and I'm happy I decided to have so many images framed. The idea for a grid, rather than a single line of photographs, was inspired by several things. 1. A map of the current farmland, which I use while shooting, details the homestead plots in large, mostly rectangular grids. 2. The original internment camp buildings were also laid out in large grids, and my aunt tells me it was important to remember your building number and section name (my dad's family section was called "Alaska"), in order to not get lost. 3. I like the physical experience of viewing the big group of photographs - most people seem to stand one place and take in the totality of the piece, before going in for a closer look. There's a subtle similarity to the way one experiences a historical monument.