PATRICK NAGATANI
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
“Once in his life a man ought to concentrate his mind upon the remembered earth,
I believe. He ought to give himself up to a particular landscape in his experience, to
look at it from as many angles as he can, to wonder about it, to dwell upon it. He
ought to imagine that he touches it with his hands at every season and listens to the
sounds that are made upon it. He ought to imagine the creatures there and all the
faintest motions of the wind. He ought to recollect the glare of noon and all the colors
of the dawn and dusk.”
N. Scott Momaday
The Man Made of Words: Essays, Stories, Passages 1997
The removal and internment of 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry,
two-thirds of whom were American citizens, happened in 1942. The ten
concentration camps scattered throughout the United States in which
Japanese Americans were interned retain memorials to those tragic years.
To fully understand this black episode in American history, I needed to
personally experience the sites where 7,000 to 10,000 internees were
concentrated for more than three years. Most importantly, my parents, John
Nagatani and Diane (Yoshimura) Nagatani were interned at Jerome and
Manzanar, an aspect of our family history that was most unknown to me.
My approach to this work allowed me to be part historian,
archeologist, geologist, cartographer, photographer, and the Japanese
American Sansei investigating what has long been part of my cultural
identity. What I discovered was personally twofold. It was an experience
of the present, what exists now in the landscape of the camps. The old
foundations, decaying structures, rusting nails, concrete fish ponds, rock
gardens, farmed fields, dirty-dry desert, unused concrete water tanks,
cemeteries, recently erected monuments, and plaques, the surrounding
mountains, the weather, and the silence. In all my visits, much of the later
part of the working process (after having made pictures) meant just looking
at the ground and sitting. At Topaz, I found among the thousands rusting
nails, a flattened and rusted child’s tin truck. Close by, a fully intact trilobite
(from the Paleozoic period) was discovered. The present and the past linked.
I could not help but experience, observe, and record without linking the past
with the work. I am intrigued with how things must have been and what
informed the landscape and experience for those Japanese Americans,
victims of wartime hysteria and racism.
Landscape retains memory. I felt the individual and collective
memories that were inherent to all camps in one way or another. Every
camp is vividly etched in my mind and the images that I have selected for
this exhibition are in a very small manner a way to share this personal
experience. This work has been for me experimental and sentimental. I
realize now, after having been to the ten camps, that the experience has been
very important for me in further developing an understanding of my own
cultural background and this brief part in the lives of my parents. This work
is dedicated to my parents and to the other 120,000 inmates, many of whom
are still living, all having had to live at these places and whose memories I
encountered.
Patrick Nagatani
February, 1998
Albuquerque, New Mexico
PATRICK NAGATANI JAPANESE AMERICAN INCARCERATION CAMP
PHOTOGRAPH PORTFOLIOS
Ten Portfolios will be available at the NMJACL Art Venue September 19th, and 20th. Each
portfolio has 25 individual archival photographs of Japanese American Incarceration
Camps, each 7 X 9 inch photograph is printed on Moab archival pigment paper and
signed by Patrick Nagatani.
Six of the 25 archival photographs are depicted below:
AMACHE (GRANADA), COLORADO JAPANESE AMERICAN INCARCERATION CAMP
OPENED AUGUST 24, 1942; CLOSED OCTOBER 15, 1945. PEAK POPULATION 7,318.
MINIDOKA, IDAHO JAPANESE AMERICAN INCARCERATION CAMP OPENED
AUGUST 10, 1942; CLOSED OCTOBER 28, 1945. PEAK POPULATION 9,397.
HEART MOUNTAIN, WYOMING JAPANESE AMERICAN INCARCERATION CAMP OPENED
AUGUST OPENED 12, 1942; CLOSED NOVEMBER 10, 1945. PEAK POPULATION 10,797.
JEROME ARKANSAS JAPANESE AMERICAN INCARCERATION CAMP OPENED
OCTOBER 6, 1942; CLOSED JUNE 30, 1944. PEAK POPULATION 8,497.
MANAZANAR, CALIFORNIA JAPANESE AMERICAN INCARCERATION CAMP OPENED
MARCH 21, 1942; CLOSED NOVEMBER 21, 1945. PEAK POPULATION 10,046.
TOPAZ, UTAH JAPANESE AMERICAN INCARCERATION CAMP OPENED
SEPTEMBER 11. 1942; CLOSED OCTOBER 31, 1945. PEAK POPULATION 8,130.
PATRICK NAGATANI JAPANESE AMERICAN INCARCERATION CAMP
PHOTOGRAPHS
Five 22 X 26 framed archival photographs will be available at the NMJACL Art Venue
September 19th, and 20th. Each photograph depicts a Japanese American Incarceration
Camp and is signed by Patrick Nagatani.
The five archival photographs are depicted below:
TOPAZ, UTAH JAPANESE AMERICAN INCARCERATION CAMP OPENED
SEPTEMBER 11. 1942; CLOSED OCTOBER 31, 1945. PEAK POPULATION 8,130.
HEART MOUNTAIN, WYOMING JAPANESE AMERICAN INCARCERATION CAMP
OPENED AUGUST 12, 1942; CLOSED NOVEMBER 10, 1945. PEAK POPULATION
10,797.
POSTON, ARIZONA JAPANESE AMERICAN INCARCERATION CAMP OPENED
MAY 8, 1942; CLOSED NOVEMBER 28, 1945. PEAK POPULATION 17,814.
MANZANAR, CALIFORNIA JAPANESE AMERICAN INCARCERATION CAMP OPENED MARCH
21, 1942; CLOSED NOVEMBER 21, 1945. PEAK POPULATION 10,046.
MINIDOKA, IDAHO JAPANESE AMERICAN INCARCERATION CAMP OPENED AUGUST 10,
1942; CLOSED OCTOBER 28, 1945. PEAK POPULATION 9,397.
Art Healing: Visual Art for Emotional
Insight & Well-Being
Jeremy Spiegel (Author), Patrick Nagatani (Foreword) 2011
Art Healing: Visual Art for Emotional Insight and Well-Being reveals a
method psychiatrist and art lover Jeremy Spiegel, MD, devised over many
years to unlock our more elusive thoughts and feelings, leading to an
enhanced understanding of the inner self, catharsis, a sense of comfort and
happiness, and personal transformation.
Art Healing: Visual Art for Emotional
Insight and Well-Being was declared
an award-winner in the Art: General
category of The USA "Best Books
2011" Awards, sponsored by USA
Book News.
Art Healing: Visual Art for Emotional Insight and Well-Being reveals why this is so
and how to do it. As an alternative to conventional therapy, art healing provides results
that are often immediate, based on a method that is cost free and always available. Art
healing, while ideal for individuals who are drawn to self-reflection, has the potential to
benefit people of any age and background. In fact, psychiatrists, psychologists, and
masters-level therapists use this approach to help themselves as well as their patients.
Paperback: 148 pages
Publisher: Seishin Books (June 15, 2011)
ISBN-10: 0615467156
ISBN-13: 978-0615467153
Nuclear Enchantment
by Eugenia Parry Janis (Author), Patrick
Nagatani (Photographer) 1991
These large-format photographs characterized by an intense,
sulfuric color explore with profound wit and irony Nagatani's
deep understanding of nuclear fear in our time.
Paperback: 138 pages
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press; 1St Edition (November 1991)
ISBN-10: 0826312721
ISBN-13: 978-0826312723
Desire for Magic: Patrick Nagatani
1978-2008 Hardcover –2011
by Michele M. Penhall (Editor)
This distinctive monograph designed by Christopher Kaltenbach
is the first publication to survey the major photographic campaigns
Patrick Nagatani (b. 1945) has completed during his long and still
unfolding career.
About the Author
Michele M. Penhall is the Curator of Prints and Photographs at
the UNM Art Museum and has organized exhibitions that
address historical issues and projects that speak to contemporary
ideas. She has written on twentieth-century Latin American
photography and twenty-first-century artists.Hardcover: 260 pages
Publisher: University of New Mexico Art Museum; First Edition 2011
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0944282326
ISBN-13: 978-0944282328
THE ATOMIC CAFÉ, LOS ANGELES, FINE ART PRINT
BY PATRICK NAGATANI AND ANDREE TRACEY
This five colored signed color print is from the first collaboration of Patrick Nagatani and
Andree Tracey with the Polaroid Corporation. In the 1980s Patrick Nagatani lived only
one block away from the Atomic Café in the Artists Warehouse Studios.
The Atomic Cafe was a diner located at 422 East First Street in Los Angeles, California. It
opened in 1946, during the post-war Atomic Age marked with a pop culture obsession
with all things atomic.
The cafe was owned and operated by the Matoba family. It was founded by Ito and
Minoru Matoba. The cafe was notable as a popular gathering place for adherents of punk
rock in Los Angeles from 1977 forward. This was mainly due to the fact that the
proprietor's daughter, "Atomic Nancy" Matoba, covered most of the interior walls and
ceiling with posters and fliers for punk rock bands. In addition the jukebox was a
combination of punk singles, new wave, classic rock and roll, standards, and songs in
Japanese.
"On any given night you could see the likes of Blondie, The Go-Go’s, Devo, X, Warhol,
David Byrne, Bowie sitting down having a bowl of noodles in the company of old
Japanese men with full body tattoos. The legendary jukebox played everything from The
Germs to Mori Shinichi until 4 in the morning as crazy waitresses would be jumping on
top of tables trying to serve food." The cafe closed its doors on November 23, 1989.