Takako Kido

instagram : @takako.kido

PhotoVogue

Official Website

Biography
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Takako Kido was born in Kochi, Japan in 1970 and received a B.A. in Economics from Soka University in 1993. She graduated from the International Center of Photography in 2003, remained in New York working as a B&W printer and retoucher while also exhibiting and publishing a series of photo-essay projects for the Kochi Shimbun newspaper. She returned to Japan in 2008 and currently lives in Sendai in Miyagi Prefecture. She presents her work in solo and group exhibitions and at slide shows both in Japan and overseas.

Photolucida Critical Mass 2021 Top 50 Photographers
Gomma Grant 2021 finalist
2021 Lucie Scholarship Program, Emerging Artist, Honorable Mention
2022 Women Photograph Project Grant

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 Statement  - skinship

Skinship is a Japanese word that describes the skin-to-skin, heart-to-heart relationship between a mother and a child or family. Skinship includes cuddling, breastfeeding, co-bathing or co-sleeping which build intimacy. Through an experience of loving touch, a child learns caring for others. Japanese skinship is considered to be important for strengthening the bond of family and also for the child’s healthy development.

Because the idea of skinship was perfectly natural to me as Japanese, only after I was arrested in New York because of family snapshots of skinship, did I realize how unique and shocking it could be in other cultural contexts. Living in both Japan and America showed me a cultural comparison and paradox clearly.

In Japan, I gave birth to my son in 2012 and started making self-portraits, somehow, in the chaos of everyday life flying by. There seemed no boundary between our bodies, a symbiotic union. Photographing my son growing up and enjoying skinship also enabled healing my old wound.

Child-rearing is new and nostalgic at the same time. As I parent my child, I re-experience my own childhood, which is both happy and sad. As I see my son grows, I accept my aging and realize it’s not long until I have to say goodbye to my parents. When I was a kid, my late beloved grandmother told me by looking at me crying for the idea of her death that you would be ok because we would go in order. I couldn’t accept it at that time. But now as a mother, I understand what my grandmother told me and the cycle of life and death.