Kido was born in 1974 and while he majored in oil painting under Nobuya Hitsuda at the Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music, he became interested in the “phenomenon of light” and took it upon himself to learn photography through self-study.

Kido’ s works impress the viewer with their imposing form and beauty. The black and white photos, which capture animals such as birds and horses, symmetrical landscapes reflecting upon lakes, and leaves from trees on the water’ s surface along with their distorted shadows, are expressed through the refined contrast between light and shadow, and contain both physical and visional elements. In his recent color photography, he accentuates the intervention of light with the use of color and hue, which provoke a strong impression of the artist’ s perspective of the world within that elegant composition. Consistently deploying a method involving the use of film and natural lighting, the images, which give a sense of pursuing an expression of what could be called the true value of the nature of photography, instill within us a renewed joy in viewing photography and evoke a conscious search for that essence.

“A Landscape stands quiet and still, bathing in the rays of the afternoon sun. The intense light from the sun provides a multi-layered and material ‘shape’ , heightening the contrast and saturation of every ‘thing’ on land. The ‘world’ before our eyes is not simple. There lurks within these casual, everyday sceneries the mystery and wonderment of seeing and being.

My work consists of using a large format camera to determine my own ‘way of looking at the world’ . Photographs are a form of expression capable of fixing a state of ‘light’ through a conscious perspective. Pictures in which I have left traces of my own habits and handiwork are not suited for objectively and dominantly depicting the ‘world’ . There are some ‘forms’ and ‘laws’ formed both consciously and unconsciously in my photographs, and my works add a new aspect to these, sometimes breaking up the ‘forms’ to make progress.

I am a photographer. The only thing I am supposed to be doing is to keep throwing hard fastballs into the strike zone (the dead center) of the　very ‘essence of photography’ .
–Tamotsu Kido”

*image (left)
© Tamotsu Kido
courtesy of the artist and Hagiwara Projects