Literature

One of Japan’s preeminent photographers, Ishiuchi Miyako is known for work that explores trauma, loss, and the traces of time’s passage in the context of postwar Japan. Her series, “Mother’s,” she began in 2000, shortly before her mother, with whom she had a strained relationship, passed away at age 84. Over the course of several years, Ishiuchi photographed clothing, makeup, and other personal effects that belonged to her mother, a strong-willed woman who came of age in colonial Manchuria in the 1930s and worked as a truck driver in wartime Japan.