At last year's Venice Biennale, photographer Miyako Ishiuchi (b. 1947) represented Japan with her "mother's" photography series. Featuring mostly black-and-white prints of her late mother's possessions -- lingerie, shoes and cosmetics -- it was one of the biennale's highlights.
Ishiuchi started the series when her mother, with whom she had a strained relationship, passed away at age 84 in 2000. She took the pictures as a way to cope with the death. "I never in my wildest dreams thought the photos would be shown in Venice," she recalls.
One year later, Ishiuchi spoke with The Japan Times at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, where the "mother's" exhibition has returned and is on view through Nov. 5.