LO/LAUREN NAKAMURA

Care is reverence — it is holding & being held while our crinkly birthed bodies unfurl, expand & inevitably crinkle again as we age and die.
What do we do more: care about or care for?

“held” is a most basic map of mother-son-hood, both photos witnessing care that requires softness and surrender, suggesting that the evolution of holding to being held is passed on from caregiver to child across cultures.

“may 5th” captures a celebration of my grandmother & mother, two very special people who share a birthday (I don’t believe this is a coincidence). They call each other “twin,” which is cute because they’re 40 years and half a world’s ethnicities apart. We customized the cake for grandma & had to add my mom’s name with herbs. Does this mean we care more about grandma? Certainly not, but why did we do that?

Lo/Lauren Nakamura (she/her/they) is a Pittsburgh-based Japanese American Reiki Master Teacher, movement guide and social worker whose creative offerings embody the integration of light and darkness, mind and body, joy and sorrow. Her positionality as a queer biracial woman informs her photography, poetry and music, which illustrate somatic liberation through inspecting, dissolving and rebuilding social paradigms.