Desert Sands
Photographs by Emily Hanako Momohara
with art from internment camps
January 24 - March 15, 2009
Exhibit information
Through photography, I create my own versions of the past as they relate to my current world. They are constructions, interpretations, illusions, and myths of what happened. The imagery is a personal journey of discovery and loss.
- Emily Hanako Momohara

Emily Hanako Momohara is a sansei and Assistant Professor of Art, Photography at the Art Academy of Cincinnnati. During World War II, her family was sent to Minidoka (she hails from the Seattle area), located in southern Idaho, where most of the Oregon Nikkei affected by internment were relocated. She struggles to understand the legacy of that experience, and her journey to find this heritage is the springboard for her artwork.

The physical remnants of the incarceration camp have become shrine-like in my mind. Sand, sagebrush, barbed wire, and pottery shards have replaced the stories that are lost from my family’s experience. In the Desert Sands series, I have used sand in various ways to bury, build, obscure, and reveal the experience of my family members. This methodology refers to archaeology, burial and death, and the desolation of the desert. I use objects that symbolize the holes in my family stories: the Japanese culture my family was ashamed of during the war and incarceration.
- Emily Hanako Momohara

Her photography series Desert Sands will be on display January 24 through March 15, 2009. Accompanying Desert Sands will be a series of black and white photographs taken at the Minidoka site by Ms. Momohara, as well as an exemplary exhibition of art made by residents of the internment camps (primarily Minidoka and Tule Lake).

Oregon Nikkei Legacy Center
121 NW 2nd Ave.
Portland, OR 97209
503-224-1458
www.oregonnikkei.org