In 1960 Tokuko Ushioda enrolled in the Kuwasawa Design School, graduating in 1963 with a degree in photography from the Living Design Department. At the Design School, she received instruction from photographers Yasuhiro Ishimoto (1921–2012) and Kiyoji Ōtsuji (1923–2001). She also developed close ties with fellow students Yutaka Takanashi (1935–), Takao Niikura (1939–) and Fusako Kodama (1945–), as well as Shigeo Gochō (1946–1983), Masao Sekiguchi (1946–), Yoshitaka Saji (1946–2007) and Kazuto Miura (1946–).

From 1966 to 1978, T. Ushioda served as a photography research assistant and lecturer at both the Kuwasawa Design School and Tokyo Zokei University; she also undertook the photographic documentation of textile works at those same schools. From 1975 on, she worked as a freelance photographer. In 1976 she held her first solo exhibition, Hohoemi no tejō [Handcuffed Smile] (Shinjuku Nikon Salon, Tokyo). While continuing in her work as a research assistant, T. Ushioda presented her early series, Machi e [To the Streets], at the time was also titled Hohoemi no tejō, in which she photographed the Ginza district and circus sideshows in Shinjuku and Asakusa. The series, an encapsulation of T. Ushioda’s fixed-point observational perspective, features snapshots of people living on the streets of Tokyo and serves as a crucial starting point for the still life photography she developed in later years, whose expressions hint at an ‘era and society’ lurking in the background.

In 1978 she gave birth to a daughter, Maho, and married photographer Shinzō Shimao (1948–). Over a roughly seven-year period, from the end of 1978 until 1985, she lived with her husband and daughter in a 15-tatami-mat (roughly 24.3 square metre) room on the second floor of a historic western-style house in the Gotokuji neighbourhood of Setagaya City, Tokyo (once the residence of famed politician Yukio Ozaki). Accordingly, she began photographing the second-hand Swedish refrigerator, or ice box, that the family used with a Bronica S2 camera as a means of recording her daily life there. From 1981, she took fixed point observational photographs of the interiors and exteriors of various household refrigerators. In 1996, she published the photobook Reizōko/ICE BOX (BeeBooks). In 2022, after nearly forty years of residence in her western-style house, she released the photobook Mai hazubando [My Husband] (torch press), which collected previously unpublished photographs of the everyday life she spent there with her husband and young daughter.

Since 1995 T. Ushioda has been focused on the Hon no keshiki/BIBLIOTHECA series, which casts books in the role of art object. During that time, she also published a trilogy of photobooks: Misuzu Shobō kyū shaoku [The Former Offices of the Misuzu Shobo Publisher] (Genki Shobō, 2016), for which she spent six months photographing the Hongō-san-chōme office building, the headquarters of the Misuzu Publishing Company from 1948 to 1996, prior to its demolition; Sensei no atorie [My Teacher’s Atelier] (Usimaoda, 2017), for which she photographed the studio of her late mentor, K. Ōtsuji, with the assistance of his widow, Seiko Ōtsuji and, of course, Hon no keshiki/BIBLIOTHECA (Usiomada, 2017), for which she photographed such places as university libraries, the National Diet Library, second-hand bookstores and writers’ studios. Recent publications include Biburiobiburi [Bibliobibly] (BON BOOK, 2024) and Kaishū mae, Maekawa Kunio sekkei Kanagawa kenritsu toshokan [Before Renovation: The Kanagawa Prefectural Library Designed by Kunio Maekawa] (Sarutahiko Kōhī, 2024). T. Ushioda’s long-standing ‘book’ project is considered to constitute the core of her work.

In 2018 she won the 37th Domon Ken Award, the Photographic Society of Japan Lifetime Achievement Award and the 34th Higashikawa Domestic Photographer Award. In 2019 she received the Kuwasawa Special Award, and in 2022 she received the Jurors’ Special Mention for Mai hazubando at the Paris Photo/Aperture PhotoBook Awards.