Ricardo Tokugawa is a Brazilian born in São Paulo, Brazil and grandson of immigrants from Okinawa (islands located in the south of Japan). He has in his path the mixture of three cultures: Brazilian, Okinawan and Japanese.

He started his academic career in the area of civil engineering, graduating in 2009 and working for 8 years in this area. In 2017, he decided to move to Paris, where he studied photography and lived for two years, until returning to his hometown in 2019.

This experience in a foreign country, until then unknown, made him start questioning and feeling strange about his own identity. On his return to São Paulo he began an investigation of his family, his home and the relationship between these two concepts. Through this research process, in 2021 he published his first photobook, Utaki, by Lovely House (Brazil).

He is currently living in Paris and continues his research and studies in Japanese and Okinawan anthropology. He also participates together with the Magnum Photos agency in the European Union’s training program in preservation, conservation and valorisation of photographic archives and provides assistance to the Franco-Russian photographer Gueorgui Pinkhassov, a member of the same agency.