We live in an information-rich time-poor culture. Takigawa sees a society that is becoming more disconnected from nature—from natural rhythms, cycles, and seasons.
Fascinated with the concept of time, he seeks to understand the feeling that time is “speeding up.” This exploration led him to revisit the concept of “no time”—meaning no mind. Eastern philosophies profess that the present moment is the only “reality” and that past and future are an illusion. Being in the present becomes an antidote to the perception of “accelerating” time. Practicing presence places an emphasis on doing rather than the result—still, the process informs the result. To understand presence is simply to be present. Photography is one way for Takigawa to embrace the moment, suspend time, and connect with being. Western art is about the subject, the individual, and Newtonian fragmented reality while Eastern art is about context, the group, and wholeness.
His life as an artist has been committed to creating work that combines Eastern and Western attributes, giving rise to an unfamiliar wholeness. In the beginning of this series, Takigawa was interested in working with familiar and familial objects. He was seeing pattern on pattern as a way of expressing the background as subject—making subject and background inseparable and equal. Later in the series, he began exploring the feelings of wanting to be more connected to his family and its history—to bring old memories into the present and make them new—to give them renewed expression and life in the present. The images incorporate family/friend photographs, both vintage and contemporary, along with artifacts and objects that are meaningful to him today. Portraying the past as soft-focus and combining it with relevant elements of the present, there is a resolution and integration of time and relationships, making the past alive and meaningful in the present. For Takigawa, this work is a synthesis of history, the present, and a faith in the future.
About Jerry Takigawa
Jerry Takigawa is an independent photographer, designer, curator, and writer. He is the creative force behind the Center for Photographic Art’s PIE Labs creativity workshop. Takigawa is a recipient of many honors including the Imogen Cunningham Award, the Clarence J. Laughlin Award, CENTER’s Curator’s Choice Award, the Rhonda Wilson Award, the Foto Forum Santa Fe Photography Award, and LensCulture Critic’s Choice Award Top 10. Exhibited internationally, his work is in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Brooklyn Museum, the Crocker Art Museum, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Library of Congress, the Japanese American Museum of Oregon, and the Monterey Museum of Art. He studied photography with Don Worth at San Francisco State University and received a degree in art with an emphasis in painting. His monograph, Balancing Cultures, was published by Dayo Press in 2021. Takigawa lives and works in Carmel Valley, California. [Official Website]
