One of the best-known Japanese artists of the international scene, Mariko Mori (born 1967) envisions fantastical worlds and beings in spectacular photographs and videos-frequently casting herself amid these scenarios as a Bjork-esque avatar in biomorphic and technological symbiosis.

Mori studied fashion design in Tokyo, worked briefly as a model and later studied fine art in England. This early education is visible in her elaborately produced photographs, videos and sculpture that are as reminiscent of Hollywood as they are of contemporary art. Her recent work involves exotic landscapes, computer-generated images and choreographed performances for which the artist designs her own costumes and plays the central characters.

This extraordinary and substantial publication offers a retrospective of Mori's entire oeuvre, and is the first to present the complete Beginning of the End: Past, Present, Future, a photographic cycle produced over a period of 11 years, in which Mori presents herself as a time traveler in a plexiglass capsule at significant symbolic locations, from Giza to New York to Shanghai.

The volume, bound in artificial leather and printed in the highest possible quality, was awarded as „one of the most beautiful books from all over the world“
in 2008.