Selecting judge:Mikiya Takimoto

The photographer, who had taken portraits of her mother, resumed taking photos after her mother's death using, as her motif, plants that her mother had once loved. It resembles typology in a way, but the work imparts a sense of life because the objects were taken as living things – as subjects in their own right – and not as specimens. The work was apparently inspired by the folding screen art of Kourin Ogata, but photographing the plants by physically thrusting them against a white background makes the photos look like portraits of a deceased person. When I stood in front of these photos, the ambiguity of the borderline between life and death coaxed me toward a mysterious sensation. The photos are a mingling of loneliness, grief, and other sentiments.