I am 'sansei.' In my culture that means that my grandparents all immigrated to the United States from Japan. My great childhood discovery was a box filled with photographs and medals from my father’s WWII service. He was a combat veteran of the U.S. Army’s much decorated, all Japanese American, 442nd Regiment. That box was the seed of my interest in the relationships between photography, memory, and the way that race, culture and society manifest themselves in the landscape. While I embarked on studies of economics in college and searched for my future, I hopped freight trains, drove taxicabs, and I realized that I seemed to carry a camera everywhere. In 1978, I earned a BFA from the University of Colorado and, in 1985, a MFA in photography from Arizona State University. After a brief move to New York City, I returned to Arizona where, for 33 years, I taught photography at Glendale Community College outside of Phoenix. I retired in 2020. My one-person shows include shows at ASU’s Northlight Gallery, the Print Center in Philadelphia, Modified Arts in Phoenix, Phoenix Community College, and Eye Lounge, an Phoenix artist's collective that I currently belong to. I live in Phoenix with my wife, Teri, and a dog.
