Editor's Note: This photograph can be used in conjunction with the lesson plan Making a Home: Japanese Contemporary Artists in New York.

The artist Mayumi Terada is simultaneously both a sculptor and a photographer. She creates works like the one here by constructing scale models of scenes and photographing these artificial spaces. By photographing her models, particularly with black and white film, she begins to obscure their truly miniature size and brings them into the reality of our scale. Terada’s scenes contain no human figures, yet evidence of recent human presence is often implied, contributing to the haunting atmosphere of these works.

Terada was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1958.  She moved to New York in 2001 and currently lives and works in Manhattan.