Dean K Terasaki
Quantitative Analysis
Image Created: 2023
Medium: Archival Pigment on Unryu paper
Edition: 25
Print: 1/25
Unframed: $400
Frame: 18.25″ x 21.75″
Framed: $575
Hear from Dean
From the artist
For over thirty-five years, I have sustained an interest in combining two or three pictures into a photomontage. I create montages to expand image content beyond the singular moment in time. The point of departure in my picture, “Quantitative Analysis,” is a snapshot of my father and a couple of his World War II U.S. Army buddies. The guy in the cool shades on the right is my dad. The array of numbers are from paperwork for the S. Ban Import Company, my grandfather’s business. After my father passed on, I discovered that he had saved those old papers. The tables of numbers are data from chemical tests, and they stand for my grandfather’s skill with numbers.
My grandfather had shown his mathematical skill as a young man. That led to his immigration to America and eventually to managing a branch of the S. Ban Company. Grandpa did all the accounting for the business using an abacus. Later, when my uncle had bought an adding machine for his pharmacy business, Grandpa could still calculate faster with the abacus than my uncle with his new adding machine. My father was also very good at math. His skills were such that, after he was drafted and trained, he could quickly calculate the correct trajectory for the shells launched from a mortar. That fact put him around 100 yards behind the front line during combat. He was a sergeant in the famed 442d Regiment. Dad’s battalion was known as The Purple Heart Battalion. In my mind, math might have saved his life.
Memory always informs experience. The photographic moment is an armature that transforms from contact with a second or third image. These photomontages are expressions about the complex interaction between culture, personal memory, and the experience of time.