[7][36][22] Critics have described them as façades or projections expressing Nakagawa's mixed feelings about the U.S. while also spotlighting concealed or obfuscated historical issues and fabricated national mythologies (e.g., American Indian Flag, 1992; Windshield Washer, 1996).

[36][22][32] In the wake of the 2016 American election, Nakagawa revisited those works in a new series, "Eclipse" (2018– ), which consisted of dark gray-toned prints of abandoned screens (from old negatives and newly photographed scenes) that he left empty as blank, dystopian monuments in disorienting Midwest landscapes.

[37][39][32] Writers suggest that the images—which employ a unique printing process offering exceptional sharpness and tonality—seem to merge night and day, positive and negative, present and future in contrast to the polarized, black-and-white political climate in which they were produced.

[2][8] Writers characterized the square-format series by its subtle tonal values, poetic quality and oblique, symbolic vision;[2][1][9] ARTnews critic Robert C. Morgan described Nakagawa's approach to the difficult subject "startling, convincing, and ultimately, redeeming.

"[4] The series includes a scene of Nakagawa's daughter surrounded by stuffed toys with the shadows of her parents bowing toward her (Morning Light, Bloomington, 1999) and images of chest X-rays, ultrasounds, and his father before and after receiving chemotherapy (Hot Springs, Hakone, Japan, Summer 1998).

[10][1][2] In 2010, as his mother’s health began to decline, Nakagawa started the "Kai II" series, which he photographed in digital color, allowing him to develop a subdued, pastel palette with a more feminine quality.

[2][1] The series depicts his wife and daughter, but primarily, his mother, with images of her passage through medical care, her belongings (perfume, nylons, empty walker washed by the Ninomiya surf), and finally, her hand in Nakagawa's just prior to death.

[1][35][42] The series' title (which means between) and formats reflect an attempt to make sense of his own life experience and three generations of images taking place in an evolving, liminal space between two countries.

[1] It mixes traditional Japanese and American popular cultures, images of unknown ancestors and Nakagawa's youth, and themes of movement, displacement, memory and time, using repeated motifs (e.g., a mountain in Passing View) and pointed juxtapositions, as in Castle (2003–5), which interlaces pink-and-blue-toned filmstrips from a childhood vacation to Disneyland into a 1912 sepia-toned, formal group photo celebrating the construction of a large Osaka house.

[31][11][43][5] Nakagawa photographed consecutive parts of each subject with a high-resolution camera, then digitally stitched them to create large (20” x 60”), seamless vertical images, whose format references traditional kakemono landscape scroll paintings.