"Flashback" artist showcases his personal history in Baltimore art exhibit

A Baltimore Museum of Art exhibit is showing off the city's pivotal role in the history of photography, but one of the featured artists is showing off his own.

Kei Ito is among the dozens featured in Flashback: Two Centuries of Baltimore Photography. WJZ is the proud media sponsor of the exhibit.

Ito has two pieces people can see; both are heavily influenced by a family member who survived a major piece of history.

Ito's historical influence

Ito found his passion for photography when he was in high school in New Zealand.

That passion took him to the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, which is where he started experimenting beyond the physical camera.

"[I felt] the camera was too limiting, so there I started to experiment [with different art forms like] printmaking, some of the darkroom techniques," Ito said. "But I [didn't] fully embrace [a multidisciplinary approach] until I came to Baltimore."

He came to Baltimore for a Master's in Fine Arts program at the Maryland Institute College of Art, or MICA.

While there, he found the roots for his artwork.

When one of his professors asked what specific theme would guide his work, Ito decided to focus on the inherited trauma from his grandfather, a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing.

That bombing was one of two by the United States in August 1945 in the final days of World War II. The bombings remain the first and only use of nuclear weapons in an armed conflict.

"I think it ultimately always comes back to yourself," Ito said. "I remember [my grandfather] telling me that the day of Hiroshima was like hundreds of suns lighting up the sky. That's the memory I inherited from my grandfather. How do I express that matter within the idea of the photography?"

Pieces in the exhibit

The pieces Ito is showing in Flashback are heavily influenced by this: Born From the Light and Ash Lexicon.

Born From the Light is actually made from the shadow of a piece of Ito's childhood, a Godzilla figurine.

"If the Godzilla was born from the light caused by H-bomb testing -- that's how one of the films talked about how Godzilla was born...it's kinda like we have a shared history," he said.

Ito also used a process of cameraless photography in this piece, which has become a signature of his. The only control in the process is how much sunlight he exposes to light sensitive material.

For Ash Lexicon, Ito focused on one of his grandfather's writings, which recalled his grandfather finding a burned dictionary after the bombing.

Ito's grandfather likened it to a film negative.

So, Ito burned dictionaries and stuffed pieces of those pages into film canisters to ask the question: does this make those pieces a photo?

While Ito's work draws on his past and inherited trauma, he asks onlookers to do the same with their histories.

"My practice is all about finding the many dots in teh past and looking at where we are right now. Make a line," Ito said. "Trying to see if there's anything that connects us together and where do we go from here."

Flashback will be up at the BMA until Feb. 21.