OYAKO, the Japanese word for parent and child, is the title of a series I have been working on since 1982.
It began with a magazine assignment to photograph punk musicians when I hit on the idea of photographing them with their parents. Thinking it would be an amusing way to bring out the differences in lifestyles and fashions between the two generations, what came back was infinitely more.
The pictures revealed so much about family relations; I decided to continue exploring this theme as a way of looking at Japanese society and the changes from one generation to the next.
The bond between a parent and child has an enormous impact everyone, no matter where we are from. The parents are the first people that a newborn baby meets and the base for all future relations. As the child grows, so do the roots that connect them to family, friends, and communities.
OYAKO is a link in of a long unbroken chain that goes back to the beginning of life itself.
