by 
An Exhibition by Alan Nakagawa
May 8 through September 18, 2019
Unfinished Proof Ninomiya, was the culmination of a year’s worth of research by the artist in the CSUDH Donald R. & Beverly J. Gerth Archives & Special Collections of the Library.
The University’s PRAXIS Program, in collaboration with the Gerth Archives and Special Collections Department, invited Alan Nakagawa to be a PRAXIS Artist-in-Resident. From May 2018 to May 2019 Nakagawa investigated the newly rediscovered and expansive Ninomiya Photo Studio Archive, built from the Ninomiya Photo Studio, a business located in Little Tokyo from 1949 to the 1980s and a fixture in the Japanese American community. The Ninomiya Photo Studio Collection contains over 100,000 prints and negatives. It is part of the larger CSU Japanese American Digitization Project (CSUJAD).
The exhibition featured multidisciplinary elements that created what Nakagawa considered a time machine, a look at the past through the photographs and lives of everyday people.
About Alan Nakagawa
Los Angeles-based artist Alan Nakagawa’s interdisciplinary practice includes video, sculpture, performance, and sound. It is rooted in research and the specific use of archives and oral histories. He was the inaugural artist-in-residence with the Los Angeles Department of Transportation and its Great Streets Neighborhood improvement program and has recently worked on projects at the Watts Towers, the Smithsonian, and the Getty Villa.
