Michi Itami
b. 1938, Los Angeles, CA
Kazoku, 1997
Computer generated photo on rice paper
Courtesy the artist

During the groundswell of 1990s multicultural explorations of personal histories, printmaker and Godzilla: Asian American Art Network member Itami incorporated new digital techniques to render images of her family, particularly her father Akira Itami who volunteered in the U.S. Army after their family was incarcerated at the Manzanar War Relocation Center, a concentration camp, during World War II by Executive Order 9066. Akira Itami and his tragic fate is the inspiration for a character in Toyoko Yamasaki's novel "Futatsu no Sokoku," Two Motherlands (1983). Drawing on the deep ambivalence of Japanese-American identity, the computer manipulated image is a composite of her grandparents and father as both child and uniformed adult.