Ishikawa Mao attended high school in
Naha City and was a non-active member of her school's photo club. As a high school student, Ishikawa observed and participated in anti-reversion protests organized by the New Left. Following a falling out with her family in 1972, Ishikawa left home to join a group of student activists in Tokyo. While living in Tokyo, in 1974, Ishikawa attended the Workshop Shashin Gakkō (Workshop School of Photography) to study with
Shōmei Tōmatsu (the school was founded by him and other influential photographers including
Nobuyoshi Araki,
Masahisa Fukase, and
Daidō Moriyama in 1974 and lasted through 1976). In 1975, Ishikawa moved to Koza City (currently
Okinawa City) and sought work at bars catering to Black soldiers in Teruya and Kin Town. Although Ishikawa was initially motivated by a desire to photograph the U.S. presence in Okinawa, her attention turned towards the women servicing these bars. Ishikawa's images from the 1970s reflect her admiration and affection for working-class Okinawan women that would persist throughout her career. Under the Okinawan photographer collective Aman (あーまん), Ishikawa published these images in her breakout photobook
Hot Days in Camp Hansen (1982). As a consequence from the fallout of her first book, Ishikawa divorced her first husband; she later moved to
Tomigusuku in 1983 and opened an izakaya near Aja-Shinko port in Naha. The rowdy fishermen and dockworkers who frequented her bar emerged as the subjects for her book
A Port Town Elegy (1990). Despite managing a bar and caring for a young daughter (b. 1980), Ishikawa began following local performer Nakada Sachiko and her theatrical group. Her images of the famed Okinawan entertainer were published in ''Sachiko Nakada's Theater Company'' (仲田幸子一行物語) (1991). During this time Ishikawa also worked part time for Aman doing administrative work. From the mid-1980s, Ishikawa's growing interest in the international impact of military bases led her to venture outside of Japan. Her images from this period reveal how the lives of the people she met in Okinawa eventually unfolded once they left the island. In 1986, Ishikawa spent two months in the U.S. upon an invitation to stay with former G.I Myron Carr, a close friend she met while working in Koza. The scenes of African American communities in inner city
Philadelphia were used in her series
Life in Philly which was shown at the Minolta Photo Space in Tokyo the same year. With the support of Zen Foto Gallery, and texts written by Tōmatsu Shōmei and Takeuchi Keisuke, this series was turned into a photobook nearly 30 years later. In 1988, Ishikawa revisited the bars that she had formerly worked at in the 1970s and found that the majority of workers were immigrants from the Philippines. After befriending some of the dancers, Ishikawa accompanied one of the women on a trip back to her hometown in Manila between 1988 and 1989. She later self-published the images from her trip in the book
Philippines (フィリピン) (1989). Once she returned from the Philippines, Ishikawa took on numerous jobs photographing for local news organizations including
Okinawa Times and
Ryukyu Shimpo. In addition to covering events and important figures within Okinawa prefecture, Ishikawa traveled to other Asian and South Asian countries including Indonesia (1991), Singapore(1991), Korea (1992) and Taiwan (1992). in 2001, she was diagnosed with rectal cancer, undergoing surgery that left her with a permanent colostomy bag; in 2017, she was found to have stage 4 cancer. Despite her condition, Ishikawa remains active as a photographer, releasing multiple books and exhibiting her work internationally. In 2010, Ishikawa was awarded the Sagamihara Photo Awards for her book
FENCES, OKINAWA. In the subsequent year, she published ''Here's What the Japanese Flag Means to Me
(日の丸を観る目) (2011), a strong critique of the Japanese government featuring interviews and photographs taken of Japanese and international participants from 1993 to 2011. In 2017, Ishikawa postponed lifesaving surgery in order to attend exhibitions and events related to this project as well as her first internationally published photobook Red Flower: The Women of Okinawa
(2017). She eventually underwent surgery in July and exhibited parts 1-4 of her Great Ryukyu Photo Scroll'' series in September of that year. A crowdfunding campaign raised over 2,500,000 yen to cover costs related to her cancer treatment and exhibition. == Exhibitions ==