Safer Streets
Primary
Kenji Nakahashi
(Sakauchi (present-day Ibigawa), Gifu Prefecture, Japan, 1947–Manhattan, New York, 2017)
Date1994; printed 1995
MediumChromogenic print on paper
DimensionsSheet: 11 × 14 in. (27.9 × 35.6 cm)
Credit LineBlanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Anonymous gift in memory of Kenji Nakahashi, 2020.210
Rights Statement
Collection AreaModern and Contemporary Art
Object number2020.210
On View
Not on viewJapanese-born Kenji Nakahashi settled in New York in the 1970s and lived there until his death in 2017, finding inspiration in the city around him. His street photography captures serendipitous scenes, heightening their humor or strangeness through wordplay, seen here in Safer Streets, which depicts a police officer strolling through foam-wrapped scaffolding.
Nakahashi experimented with photography and printmaking, as well as painting and drawing. His work across mediums is unified by a fascination with daily life, environments, and objects, revealing situations to be both humorously mundane and enigmatically beautiful, and challenging the viewer’s expectations in the process.
Exhibitions
Kenji Nakahashi
1984; printed 1992
