A Shared Elegy

A Shared Elegy presents two pairs of photographers connected by family ties. Osamu James Nakagawa and his uncle, Takayuki Ogawa, and Elijah Gowin and his father, Emmet Gowin, present unique but overlapping visions recording family histories. Nakagawa, like his uncle, Ogawa, grew up in Japan and draws upon his country’s traditions and the practice of honoring elders; family heritage and home in Virginia have inspired the Gowins to make photographs that depict the intimate and hallowed nature of the world. These photographs compel us to reflect and consider our place in the cycle of life.
A collaboration between the Grunwald Gallery and the Eskenazi Museum of Art at Indiana University, this exhibition catalogue juxtaposes rich imagery with discussions about the artists and their aesthetic approaches to photography.

Joel Smith received his PhD from Princeton University
in 2001. From 1999 to 2005, he was Fisher Curator at the Frances Loeb Art Center at Vassar College. His publications include Edward Steichen: The Early Years, Steinberg at the New Yorker, and The Life and Death of Buildings: On Photography and Time. Smith was named the Peter C. Bunnell Curator of Photography at Princeton University in 2011. Since 2005, he has curated more than a dozen exhibitions, including
Saul Steinberg: Illuminations, a traveling exhibition that opened in 2006 at the Morgan Library and Museum; Beloved Daughters: Photographs by Fazal Sheikh (2007); Pictures of Pictures (2010); and The Life and Death of Buildings (2011).?Smith is currently the Richard L. Menschel Curator and Department Head of Photography at the Morgan Library and Museum, New York.
Yoshiko Suzuki is curator of the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum. Exhibitions she has curated include Dreaming of Tomorrow: Social Documentaries that Moved American Society
(2004–05), Radiant Moments: The New Snapshot, Contemporary Japanese Photography (2010–11), Snapshots Cast Their Spell
(2010–11), Ueda Shoji and Jacques Henri Lartigue: Play
with Photography (2013–14), and Sato Tokihiro: Presence or Absence (2014).
Nanette Esseck Brewer is Lucienne M. Glaubinger Curator of Works on Paper at the Eskenazi Museum of Art, where she has worked since 1986. In addition to overseeing the museum’s collection of more than 12,000 photographs, including the archives of photographers Art Sinsabaugh and Henry Holmes Smith, she has organized exhibitions on women photographers, religious architectural photography, portrait photography, and the works of contemporary artists, such as Hiroshi Sugimoto and Andy Warhol. Brewer served as the exhibition coordinator and contributing author for the nationally touring Art Sinsabaugh retrospective. She received her MA in the history of art from Indiana University and is a member of the Print Council of America, Oracle, and a fellow with IU’s Center for Integrative Photographic Studies.