Critique Notes for February 3rd: Motoya Nakamura

Discussion of new color portraits of Japanese American WWII Veterans in comparison to the first black-and-white double exposure series
The idea of the gap between the past and the present.

Comments-
-These new color works are great!
-They tell the same story as your black-and-white work but in a better more unique way.
-All of the stories, theory, etc. are compounded into one compelling narrative image.
-The flatness works, the couple become memorialized like one of the portraits on the wall behind.
-the bad lighting works
-YOU DON’T NEED THEIR LEGS!
-Their expressions are great whatever way you cut it. There is no loss of poignancy with a smile.
-Your black-and-white works are beautiful but they are repetitious in them the personal stories, the identity of each veteran is lost. They become all the same person.
-DON’T FEEL LIKE YOU NEED TO BE CONSISTENT FOR THE SAKE OF THE GRANT! They want you to develop your project, which inevitably means to change it.
-“There are no tricks involved with these new portraits. They show a different level of honesty which works.”
-These images are as much about the home as they are about the people--“They are part of it but they are not it”
-nice repetition within the photos, the visual repetition is like the experience of déjà vu or memory that you are often talking about.
-again, you seem to be representing actual people in these images, people who represent an idea rather than presenting the idea but forgoing a true representation of the people.

Suggestions-
-Don’t struggle to make the photos consistent, go in with the hope to just capture their lives.
-Look at the geology of the home.
-Try to not represent a ‘type’ of hero, veteran, soldier
-Separate the two bodies of work. Show the color photos but perhaps put the black-and –white in a book form?
-print the color photos largish-but not too big. Big enough to suggest ‘document’ rather than ‘snapshot’ or ‘family portrait’ but not ‘Jeff Wall big’
-To deal with shooting in the homes of those who are deceased. Document their absence, or their family. Take a picture of where they used to spend their time, or their favorite thing.