Kitao Sakurai was born in Kinugasa, Japan and grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. Kitao started his career as a child actor and began shooting films in high school. By the time he dropped out of college at the age of 18, his films had appeared in competition in top international film festivals such as Stockholm, Tribeca, Oberhausen Kurzfilmtage, New York Underground, and Leeds, to name a few. After moving to New York, Kitao worked in opera staging and set design before turning his focus to cinematography. Since then, Kitao has photographed narrative features, documentaries, operas, short films, and established himself as a top music video cinematographer, regularly working with some of the biggest artists in the recording industry. Kitao’s work has shown on MTV, MTV2, VH1, and BET.

Kitao also works actively in modern dance choreography and circus acrobatics. His troupe was recently awarded a grant from the Emerging Artist Commissioning Program at the STREB Lab for Action Mechanics to further its work with the flying trapeze.

As a performer, Kitao is most recently featured in artist Lawrence Weiner’s controversial new film piece, "Water In Milk Exists."