Bio

Hiroyo Kaneko is a photographer born in Aomori, Japan, and based in Oakland, California. Her images trace the delicate threads between people and place, memory and distance—echoes of a life shaped by movement and migration. With an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and a background in French literature, her work explores themes of belonging and impermanence with quiet clarity. Kaneko’s photographs have been exhibited at institutions including SFMOMA, MIMOCA in Kagawa, and the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. She was awarded the Santa Fe Prize for Photography in 2009, and in 2022, received the Society of Photography Award in Japan for her portrait series Appearance.