¡Colores!; 302; New Mexico's Nuclear Enchantment: Patrick Nagatani; Nagatani House (Old Photos)

You know, she probably did a job in the wonder years. I wouldn't even talk to her. No, she's so perfect. She'd like be in the wonder years. She looks like she's along some circles. She, that's a he. Oh, thank you. Come on. I can see that comic box shot on her, yeah. You know, moving to Los Angeles, I, the home of, of the M word, multiculturalism, but that's reflected, how's that? Coliseum Street School. In fact, the woman who taught this class is some peripheral stuff. She refused to be in the class shot. You notice there's no teacher in there. Why? She was, she was a strange lady. She had two sons. And one of them was named Elvis. And that's no joke. And to this day, I wonder. I wonder if it was truly Elvis Costello. And, you know, she was a strange lady. She wore these thick glasses. One never knows. Nevertheless, I was in the multicultural phenomenon. The land of Eddie Awakis,

Eugene Facoutes, Calvin Cosecchi's, Ron Adacchi's, along with Sandy Elkins. And there's, there's the Patrick Valentine's. And George Fukushima was actually born in Japan. The rest of us were all Japanese Americans. But at last, some bros to interact with. And basically, my upbringing in California was around other Japanese American families and with people with the same kind of upbringing. Yeah. And a couple of pictures for a second. I'm going to pull it away. And then you plan it to yourself Patrick. Wherever you are. Really, American Japanese. Japanese American. And I don't see any other ones.

Yeah, there must be a couple more. Let's get back here with the crew cut out. Is that usable? It's all that. I think I could suppose you're right. Could I have quite a more time Patrick? I'll put it up this, your face the second time. More time please, I'm sorry. Coming from underneath too. No, this isn't okay. Just real. Yeah, like that. That's great. It has to fucking around all the time. Can I take it from your eye, honey? Look at this right here. Boy, it's not. The macro is supposed to get a sin. I thought it was. Here, put the picture down.

I'll need to pick that up again. Oh, pick it up again. Go ahead, point. Who's the water head? She's a cute one. Yeah, there's something about her. She's going to have a nice face. I don't remember any kid in her class. Where are you, Patrick? I beat you guys up. Did you ever get any spankings? You remember the scissors I was spanking? Are you mean like with the rulers and stuff? I remember the ruler. That's smart. Those scissors can back on the wallet. You know, this sister looked me up. Really? When I was in, I graduated from college and she came to L .A. She looked me up. I got

her really mad. When she looked you up? Yeah. It's like terrible. What did you do to piss her off? Point to yourself. I just think I talked about it. I started to get into art and things like that. I asked her if I could make a picture if I wanted to use it. He was talking about his pictures. And he said, you know, while Lola Montez was being photographed by Southworth and Haas in their studio in Boston, next door a woman was being strangled and murdered. Oh, wow. Which is kind of curious about his work. It's about the evil side of things, like those things. So I always look at these pictures and think about the German submarine that was being wheeled into Chicago. The less than decisive moment that this was taken, my father should have waited for the German submarine to come on back there, playing the sailor cap. The Japanese American kid and his mother with his German submarine that was captured.

What they failed to show in this picture is the paraplegic that has tripped on the sidewalk and is bleeding from the side of the mouth on the side here. When my father, like he lost maybe three or four teeth because he didn't get proper medical attention because my father just wanted to take this picture of me. It was so important to notice how it's centered a little bit more this way to take the handle off. That's the reason for that picture. I want to ask you basically what I was getting at earlier. This is actually the last shot my mother made. The flora shotter. Is she on the head? There's this famous Argentine picture that shows a priest. No, no, no. This was a photographer who was

photographing the time that the US Marines wanted to target China. There's an Argentine soldier turning and the sequence shows him raising this 45 and aiming it at the photographer and actually, and then the last shot is actually the camera and kind of disarray for me. The caption reads, it's the last shot the photographer made before he was shot. It's kind of a creepy picture when you think about it. I grew up around guns. What you're all making pictures with lots of Japanese Americans looking at explosions and holy missiles. You know that? Dicks. Sure, I really kind of, I mean, I kid around a lot and I have, but all of that kind of comes from this. You know, when you're, when you're by yourself and you're isolated in a lot of ways, I mean, I lived at this radio station and there wasn't a kid within 10 miles. He formed his little mind games. He made things, you laugh at things. If you don't laugh,

then you're in trouble. And so this kind of like black humor comes into play. And the Japanese Americans photographing themselves that was just jumping on top of a perceptual thing that occurred in one of my trips to the Trinity site. A busload of Japanese, they drive in and I stopped making pictures to watch this event. You know, and they all get out of the bus and start immediately taking pictures as they do everywhere else. They go whether it be a Disney and Land of Grand Canyon or the Trinity site. And I'm thinking, you know, these guys have no sense of the irony of what is occurring here at this moment. And that picture came about from this kind of observation of this ironic situation. So it's either looking at the outside world in this humorous, black humor sort of way or it's just the outside world creating something for me to observe or it's my own kind of albatross that I carry in terms of laughing at oneself or laughing at one's

own situation. Well, there is an irony there isn't there. And that's the thing that I think that I guess needs to be addressed on something. And it's simple as irony and being used. Here's a Japanese American who's a parent or an intern who's people were slowly dashed and is that too much to even talk about? No, not at all. But in a way, there's a difference there. Is there another one? But there's something, there's going to be something there on some level. Yeah. What that starts to talk about is you are and you aren't. You know, you are an American and yet at that time my parents felt like they weren't because they were being singled out to go to these camps. And so I think the same thing occurs throughout life. One almost forgets their difference. You're told to be like everybody else. But then you're always made aware of those differences. Either on your own or for somebody else. And so it's kind of like that jumping kind of back and

forth that becomes kind of interesting that you are different. I think any minority goes through that. Do you grow up and make pictures about themselves? No, no. And that's another thing. I mean, that's what I intentionally, you know, expressing some, having some outlet is that I've become this throughout my images. I've become both the Japanese American. I've become the Japanese terrorist. I go, I'm just chameleon who goes back and forth in my roles and my images of which I use myself many times. And I think that has to do with real life. That has to do with becoming, you know, the Polish Catholic kid in this classroom. And becoming one of them. And then going to coming to California and doing a report on Hiroshige's 100 Views of Edo in a way fostering or claiming my Japanese heritage. And so I think that's a double word.

So that's very interesting. I'd say, I'd say. What else do you want to, what else do you think you want to do? Oh, why are you, why are you atomic heritage? Why are you going after that? One of the things I picked on. No, sure, I know. Why do you, why do atomic age, you know, it's because on the simplest level, I've been a human being who has been raised whether I'm American, Japanese American, or whatever. I've been raised during my whole life has been during the atomic age. I was, again, I was born a month and a, and three days after the first atom bomb. So, you know, my whole upbringing has been through the cold war and with atomic terms. When I, when I talk about this atomic Reagan, you know, in a way that's, as you're young, you learn all these kinds of atomic terms, atomic ray guns,

atomic blasters, and things like that. And that kind of creates a psyche in your mind to when you get older and you learn about, and you live through the Cuban Missile Crisis. You live through, you're aware of situations where the world may end and where you learn about the stockpiles of nuclear weapons and three mile island and so on. All of that wears in the psyche and, and artists deal with those things in their mind. And those things that I feel not only concerns of themselves, but the concerns of the world, at least some artists do, and my work has always involved some kind of a conceptual issue. And for the last since 1983, for the most part, my art has been in some way or another informed by the atomic history, nuclear history, I should say, being in New Mexico has made it more succinct to what that's about. Now, on another level, I'm Japanese American.

And so I have a little bit more invested in that history when it comes down to the only people in the world that had ever been nuked with the Japanese. And that bomb in Hiroshima came very close to some relatives of mine, of which I didn't know until, or meet or talk to, until a few years ago. So there weren't like people that I knew that the drama was bomb was being dropped on, but an intellectual level that becomes interesting to me now today as an artist making work about this. While my first trip to Japan, I'll never forget the first time I saw at a gym, an older man who was a victim of, he was actually a prisoner in one of the Jewish concentration camps. We had a little talk, but what informed me about that were the scars on his arm. And it was interesting because it was all kind of pragmatic and worked on an

intellectual basis until I met this man. And actually saw those marks and listened to his experience as a child on how he barely survived this camp. The same kind of feeling came to me when I met the first people that I met who were victims of the Hiroshima blast, were young children are older now, and have scars from that blast. And probably are dealing, looming if not now, but in the near future with some kind of problem with blood disease cancer or something as a result of that radiation poisoning, too much radiation at the time, that really hit home. So, and when it hit home, it was kind of looking at my people, but with the realization weight I'm Japanese American and that bomber, that B -29 and Colonel Paul Tibbets, was as much my pilot as it was any American. And so there's that kind of dichotomy. And I think that I'm working that out in my pictures to some extent with the split personalities that I

play and the roles that I play. And I feel that today that I will always be American. I mean, I was raised on meat and potatoes, and I've visited Japan for one week of my life. Nevertheless, it's where my background, my culture comes from. And so I find that interesting. I find that I'm not interested in becoming Japanese, but the fact is that I am Japanese. And fortunately, and I feel blessed that I am a Japanese American and that I enjoy all of the things that this country has to offer, including my ability to teach at a major university and have the freedom of making images as I have of the nuclear culture in the state. Well, it must be absolutely fascinating for me, at the same time, to be hanging out in this state. And look, you think about two bombs. And then you look at what's going on. You know, just two bombs. And then you look at this and then you look at what that's got. Well, that kind of became

a catalyst for making the work of my learning more and more of that information about places like Los Alamos and San Diego but what's being done here. And suddenly I'm like right here in my own backyard and all this stuff is occurring in a predominance of looking at military gear in New Mexico. That coupled with its history, it's amazing. I don't see how anyone can't want to do work about it. I guess I can see that. But for me, it was imperative that I did this work. It was also interesting in that I'm still kind of an outsider in New Mexico looking at what's going on. And that the predominantly minority groups would be the Native Americans and of course going on another level of Hispanics. Ultimately, and then of course the blacks here. And women, I don't even

think I qualify as a minority in this state. Asian Asians are not real within the state of New Mexico considered a recognized minority. We're just two small and number. Asians in New Mexico. You know, there was actually a camp in Santa Fe. I don't know if anyone was there, but it was a hardcore camp. I'm sure I didn't do peace on that. That's still made in the future. You could do a 21 steps carry on that. Yeah. What if we talk about just the idea? Well, of course I speak about all this and kind of on a personal level. I think it's more about my feelings about things rather than maybe what things really are. But nevertheless it's an interesting, New Mexico is an interesting state in that

there are boundaries. There are, I mean, there are the influx of all the pueblos and the Native Americans being in one place. And bordering right on that are the national laboratories and high -tech, current state -of -the -art defense department -funded organizations that are trying to build bigger and better hydrogen bombs. There's something almost mythical about hydrogen bomb development and that interfaced with the myth and the rich wall and the magic in a way of the Native Americans and their beliefs is fascinating. It's frightening at the same time. I think that New Mexico is the number two funded state in the United States with the money from the defense department. I think Virginia slightly ahead of New Mexico. It frightens me that we are in atomic culture here that we're so dependent upon federal money, especially from the defense department. And what

happens when that money dries up or is threatened to be taken away from us in our economy? Really, plumbers is of concern. It should be, I think, a concern of every New Mexican. I'm interested in the horrific landscape that won envisions from a hydrogen bomb blast, the desolation, and the toxic poisoning of radiation. That coupled with the landscape of New Mexico as it is today which I think is beautiful. It's a beautiful state. It's that kind of mental paradox that's interesting to me and frightening. And I think that my images often convey that. That they're both beautiful and they're horrific at the same time. How many times have you had to spit that spiel out? Man, this is about 150 days. This is about 2007. That's about it. Boy,

you could just do that same spiel like open door.