Family photographs tend to recall and share family events and milestones. In looking at them, we remember our own experiences and the stories told to us by our parents, through old photographs. Though we might not be sure of the truth, as memories, sometimes tend to become fictions.

This exhibition and publication aims to look back through a period of almost fifty years of history, through the eyes of Japanese Canadian studio photographers who operated on the West Coast of Canada. The photographers captured the brief moment of the shutter opening. Moments in the lives of the subjects are recorded not in words, but in images, and now these are brought together, fragments gathered to produce stories. What do these photographs tell us in the 21st century?

The eighty photographs selected originated in the studios of Senjiro Hayashi, Kitamura, and Tokitaro Matsubuchi in the town of Cumberland, Paul Louis (Tsunenjo) Okamura in the city of New Westminster, and Shokichi Akatsuka, Yataro Arikado, Columbia Studio (M. Toyama), Empress Studio (J. Shingo Murakami), (F.S.) Fujiuwara Photo Studio, Main Studio (M. Nakashima, Gunji Nakamachi and Bungoro Tonegawa), and Jo Seiko, all in the city of Vancouver. The studio images reveal subjects from a diversity of communities: European, Chinese, Japanese and African-American immigrants are all depicted, both the province’s elite and workers.

They form a compelling visual record of individuals and groups within the multi-cultural place that was British Columbia during its formative moment. They inspire us with an impulse to tell the stories… The exhibit is being presented by the Japanese Canadian National Museum up to March 15 with Grace Eiko Thomson as the curator.

 

For more info visit: www.jcnm.ca.