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About American Origami
Image description: A shadowy image of a person, lit in red, sitting on a circular chair, with a red lamp lit beside them.
Image description: An orange origami paper crane reading the name “Cho Seung Hwi” upside down. The crane sits on a tan background.
American Origami
According to a Japanese legend, anyone who folds 1,000 paper cranes will be granted a wish from the gods; in a storybook adaptation of the legend, a young girl passes away before she can complete her 1,000 origami cranes. To honor her spirit and help her achieve what she would have wished for, her classmates folded 356 paper cranes, the exact number she would’ve needed to get to 1,000.
Nowadays, paper cranes are often found at the sites of tragedies involving children. American Origami is a devised production inspired by a book of the same name, a collection of photographs by Andrès Gonzalez, which interweaves images and stories of the survivors and victims of mass shootings in American schools over a period of eight years.
Select photographs from American Origami can be seen at the Museum of Contemporary Photography at 600 S. Michigan Ave. in their exhibition, “American Epidemic: Guns in the United States, ” open through February 20, 2022. Reserve a spot on their website here.