The elegant and enigmatic new exhibition at the Mori Art Museum, "The End of Time," is a retrospective on four decades of work by Hiroshi Sugimoto. One of Japan's most internationally acclaimed artists, Sugimoto uses photography to condense events in celebrated time-exposure series such as "Seascapes" and "Theaters," and explores the viewer's perception and understanding of reality with series such as "Portraits" and "Diorama," which take as their respective subjects Madame Tussaud's lifelike wax mannequins and the wildlife mis-en-scene found at museums of natural history.

The Mori show features 100 works, mostly photographic, and is painstakingly well designed -- installation elements include a full-sized Japanese cypress Noh theater stage (Sugimoto personally developed the look in collaboration with the museum over a period of two years). "End of Time" is the first major retrospective of his work and will move early next year to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. and then to the Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.

Several hours before the vernissage last Friday evening, a personable Sugimoto took the time to walk through the exhibition with me.