Born in Tokyo, Kyoko Hamada grew up in Chiba, Japan until her father’s job relocated the family to Wheeling, West Virginia when she was fifteen-years-old. Hamada came to New York City studying art history at Manhattanville College, graduating from Pratt Institute studying photography and painting. Her subject matter has often been the ordinary people and objects stylized and staged into subtle quiet moments dealing with self-referentiality and various metaphors. She has participated in two artist residencies in Iceland in 2009 and 2010, and has exhibited her work in the National Portrait Gallery (uk), Randall Scott Gallery, Civilian Art Projects, and Michael Hoppen Gallery (uk), among others. Hamada’s photographs have been featured in PDN Photo Annual, Communication Arts, PDN Under 30, American Photography Annuals, NY Photo Festival Award. Her latest series, “I used to be you” recently received the grand prize from the Lens Culture International Exposure Awards, and was also included in the Critical Mass Top 50. She has been working as a commercial photographer for the last 10 years; her clients include Vitra, Uniqlo and Kärcher along with several magazines including The New Yorker, London Telegraph Magazine, Atlantic Magazine, and Wall Street Journal Magazine. She lives and works in New York City.

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