Mother’s #3 [photograph]

Ishiuchi Miyako

2000, printed 2005 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

One of Japan’s preeminent photographers, Ishiuchi is known for work that explores trauma, loss, and the traces of time’s passage in the context of postwar Japan. These five photographs belong to her series, “Mother’s,” which 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. Printed at varying scales in both color and black-and-white, the photographs evoke a posthumous intimacy in which objects are transformed into potent repositories of human touch.

Artist

Ishiuchi Miyako

Date

2000, printed 2005

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Purchase, Alfred Stieglitz Society Gifts, 2018