Hiroshi Sugimoto:
Article: Most children heading to the beach tend to be preoccupied with sandcastles and ice cream, but Hiroshi Sugimoto was no ordinary child. On this particular day he was experiencing a mini existential crisis and also sowing the seeds for a future project that would make him a hugely respected, and bankable, photographer. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is pre-imagined in my noodle HIROSHI SUGIMOTO To trace Sugimoto’s path from a young boy growing up in post-war Japan to the artist we know today is to follow a photographer who is supremely dedicated to the classic medium of photography. For the “Seascapes” series (which he began in the early 1980s), Sugimoto used a large-format camera to capture the vast expanse of our oceans, shooting at night with long exposure times. It was a period of deep reflection. Staring at the horizon Sugimoto often imagined himself to be anywhere, at any time. “I consider photography as a machine that allows me to go back and forth through time,” he says. “As a medium though, it’s only been 170 years or so since its invention. For that long, many people believed what they saw was reality, but now with the introduction of digital photography, the form has become the same as painting. You can manipulate anything you want. That’s why I call digital photography a different medium. It’s not photography.” Sugimoto’s answer may seem curt, but he is anything but. Dressed impeccably in a light blue cotton shirt and dark blue blazer, he is soft-spoken and disarmingly polite. He’s in Hong Kong to give a talk at the Asia Society’s Arts and Museum Summit, and is enjoying his first few hours back in the city he last visited more than half a century ago. “It was 1962. I was a 14-year-old high school kid,” he says, chuckling at the memory. “I remember Hong Kong well, but what’s this? It’s totally changed. It’s been destroyed. There are skyscrapers and …” The thought trails off into the distance, out to sea perhaps. It’s here that we discuss how human figures rarely feature in his work. In fact, the only “people” he has shot are waxwork models of long-dead monarchs for his “Portraits” series. Asked whether he likes to shoot portraits of living people, his answer is blackly comic: “Please die first, be turned into wax, and then come back. Usually my exposure times are around 20 minutes and at a small aperture. Nobody can sit for that long.” Still, it’s hard not to feel Sugimoto is just not that interested in living people as prime subject matter. After all, alongside “Seascapes” his most interesting and well-known works are his architectural photos (geometrical and usually blurred) and his long-exposure pictures of the inside of cinemas, in “Theatres”. For that series, he set the exposure time to the exact length of the film, resulting in gorgeously rendered interiors with a single uniform white light where the picture on the screen should be. No people, no faces - just time and light. Add some water and you have the essence of life itself. “Apart from the sea, which is alive, everything I shoot is dead or manmade.” This apparent disinterest in people (in his art, not in his life) is markedly different from the two other great Japanese photographers of the second half of the 20th century. Daidô Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki, both of whom were born a decade before Sugimoto, chose a different route, preferring to shoot everyone and anyone - from businessmen to down-and-outs - in styles that tended to be closer to exposé and documentary: wild, energetic, chaotic, and hyper sexual. It was Araki who said that photography was like penetration, a philosophy Sugimoto disagrees with. “I don’t like that style at all. I never hung around with my camera
to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is pre-imagined in my noodle,” he says, tapping his head. “Reality can be made according to my own imagination. I don’t have to go out and search. There shouldn’t be surprises.” This patient approach to his work results in a striking serenity in the final image, which is reflected in his personal nature but at odds with his upbringing. “Quite the contrary,” he says, resolutely. “I was born in 1948, not long after the Japanese surrender. Tokyo had been heavily bombed, and my house was only temporary. There were 30 or 40 people sleeping in one room so it was very chaotic.” My first traceable memory is the seascape and the sharp line made by the horizon. I was about four years old and my family and I were on a train heading to a resort for the summer. I thought how beautiful the scene was and then I realized: ‘I am here. I am conscious. But who am I?’ After that, my memory just fades away into the darkness.” Hiroshi Sugimoto is best known for his large-format photographs of dioramas, seascapes and buildings, but he is also a collector and was once an antiquities dealer. He talks to Apollo about the links between his collection and his art, and about capturing the passing of time. Sugimoto is a master of the long exposure and the large-format camera; the scenes are static and preserved, but in the true black and white tones of his gelatin silver prints, they are not entirely lifeless, either. Sugimoto’s ability to trick the eye – even in just an instant – juxtaposed with his open acknowledgement of the scene’s artificiality, demonstrates both his playful curiosity and also his rigorous technique. ‘The stuffed animals positioned before painted backdrops looked utterly fake,’ Sugimoto has said before of the Dioramas photographs. ‘Yet by taking a quick peek with one eye closed, all perspective vanished, and suddenly they looked very real. I’d found a way to see the world as a camera does. However fake the subject, once photographed, it’s as good as real.’ Sugimoto speaks both English and Japanese but is, unsurprisingly, most comfortable expressing himself visually. As he walks me through a list of what’s been packed off and what still remains here, he makes a point of showing me precisely what the value of each object is to him. He flips to an illustration of a woman’s rib cage in the French anatomy book. ‘This looks like a beautiful lady being opened while she is alive,’ he says, pointing to her face, which, it’s true, is expressive and aware despite the fact that her back is spliced open to reveal the bones and tissues. ‘On the contrary,’ Sugimoto says, ‘in British 18th-century anatomy books, the body’s expressions are completely dead. But this is almost like an angel – an angel being opened.’ a fossil is just like a photograph. ‘One side is negative, one side is positive. Same thing.’ Sugimoto is much more Zen about his practice of collecting than he is about his art. But obsession goes some way to explain his owning, for example, early editions of Isaac Newton’s Optics and the Principia Mathematics. ‘I can study them,’ Sugimoto explains to me patiently. ‘I just want to stay with them and I want to live with them. Some collectors want to buy [something] at auction and put it in storage and put it back to auction after a few years – as if it’s just investment. I’m interested in how the human eye captures images and reads the images and makes meaning out of them,’ he says. ‘So, in general, I just want to know what is going on in our world. And how a human being is aware of the outside of himself or herself. As a photographer, that’s what I was interested in in the first place: the perception of human existence. How do you read what is outside your body?’ Sugimoto is not concerned with making his own work appear timeless; he is more interested in capturing an idea of history – a precise sensation of weight that time can create – with an image. When I ask Sugimoto if he worries that the human lifespan is too short a time to do everything we might want to do, he is charmingly unfazed. ‘Well, living to 100 is nothing,’ he says. He raises his arm to the window: ‘The Empire State Building on Manhattan island – it probably won’t survive for more than 200 or 300 years. The age expectation of concrete is probably 100, 200 years old. It will deteriorate. Through my collection I get a sense of time, of the passage of time, the history, the meaning of history. I just want to feel it through the object.’
CItation:
“Hiroshi Sugimoto Imagines A World Without Us” “Seeing Like A Camera”
Definitions:
Word List 1. Ambient 2. Faux 3. Mental 4. Intelligence 5. Curiosity 6. Idealistic 7. Artifact 8. Rothko 9. Framing 10. Fooling 11. Stolen 12. Extensive 13. Eery 14. Thoughtful 15. Zen 16. Imagination 17. Focus 18. Choreographed 19. Masterful 20. Past 21. Future 22. Motion 23. Time 24. Absence 25. Light 26. White 27. Suggestion 28. Unclear 29. Ancient 30. Thinker 31. Emotional 32. Powerful 33. Illusion 34. Untraditional 35. Genius 36. Magician 37. Purpose 38. Preconscious 39. Conscious 40. Before 41. Artifacts 42. Fossil 43. Documented 44. Stunned 45. Complex
46. Craft 47. Philosophical 48. Forced 49. Relaxation 50. Simplistic 51. Childish 52. Imagination 53. Relations 54. Inspiration 55. Collector 56. Consumer 57. Producer 58. Physical 59. Boundaries 60. Possible 61. Impossible 62. Point zero 63. Trick 64. Line 65. Value 66. Ready made 67. Duchamp 68. Mind 69. Isolation 70. Nothing 71. Everything 72. Contradictive 73. Free 74. Physics 75. Hidden 76. Beauty 77. After 78. Ruined 79. Pure 80. Preciouses 81. Emptiness 82. Paper 83. Ink 84. Ancient 85. Modernism 86. Objects 87. Belief 88. Viewer 89. Abstraction 90. Recording
Chosen Six Words:
Word Combinations:
Titles:
1. Illusion 2. Zen 3. Ancient 4. Ruined 5. Consciousness 6. Physical
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
1- 2- 3- 4- 5- 6- 7-
Conscious illusion Illusion Zen Ruined Zen Ruined illusion Ancient consciousness Ancient illusion
1. Illusion: A deceptive appearance or impression
2. Zen: School of Mahayana Buddhism emphasizing the value of meditation and intuition. 3. Ancient: Belonging to the very distant past and no longer in exitence 4. Ruined: Ruinedreduce (a building or place) to a state of decay, collapse, or disintegration 5. Consciousness: The awareness or perception of something by a person. 6. Physical: Relating to things perceived through the senses as opposed to the mind; tangible or concrete.
Conscious body Ancient illusion Physical perception Ancient memory Implied possibilities Bound existence Absence of law
Quotes: 1.
I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is pre-imagined in my noodle
2. I am here. I am conscious. But who am I?’ After that, my memory just fades away into the darkness.” 3.
It’s not photography.”
4.
a fossil is just like a photograph.
5.
Please die first, be turned into wax, and then come back
6.
the perception of human existence. How do you read what is outside your body?’
Notes: - takes inspiration from fossils. - the artists’s works are inspired by stone age artifacts - shops for japanese antiques; which, are one aspect that helps to define his style -”my curiosity extends in many directions” -his idol is duchamp. Similarities can be made between photography and ready made art. -he owns two studios. one for creating and another filled with inspirational items. -created a series called “seascape”. This series is similar to that of Mark Rothko’s color field paintings. -use of line, value and focus to suggest a perception. -could be defined as abstraction -Sugimoto’s style may change between series. -primarly works in large series works. -thinks of his photographs as suggestive imagary. -zen, thought, emotion -style is defined by how the photographer chooses to frame the subject. -grew up studying western culture and later broke through to study more eastern centered design. -studies the idea of zen and bhuddah -interested in modernism and idealism. -some may describe his style as makeing new of the old. -desires to stretch the human ability to percieve reality in a different way. -describes white in photographs as the prescence of absence. -light is used to create everything; however in photography light creates white (absence) -the term impossible is not true to him. what cant be done in reality can be created in the mind. -design is forceing people to take a unique look at everyday objects. -exposure is stolen light. -”deep in his mind is where he makes his art,” -perfection can only be found in the mind. objects in reality can only suggest the idea of a perfect image in the mind -describes his proscess as isolating. -unfocused imagery as a motif to the original idea of a building. -fascinated by time. photography is believed to be a moment in time but he w=uses his skills to suggest the past, present and future. -art is an illusion, a way to change the way people understand their surroundings.
Key Image:
Carabean sea, seascape series. (1991)
Pecha Kucha
Quotes for Pecha Kucha
- each slide is based off of “why” - It is a presentation that challenges the speaker to get to the point while avoiding tangents -every part should have a purpose -tells us directly what the product is. - 20 slides for 20 seconds - has run for over 67 official pecha kucha confurences - aimed to help yound designers get their work seen by bigger clients. - each slide contains minimal elements (1-3) images.
1. “I want to revert back to the spark of human consiousness” 2. “Deep in his mind is where he makes his art.” 3. “Nothing can be created using everything.” 4. “impossiblity is a false statement.” 5. “photographs are a suggestion of a image”
Historical Photographer choices: 1. Weegee 2. Henri cartier-Bressen 3. Harold doc Edgerton 4. Brassai 5. Bernice abbott 6. Eugene Atget 7. Manray
Chosen HIstorical Photographer: Berenice Abbott
Article: stylish, confident and beautiful young woman whose looks and androgynous style were in tune with the times, Abbott took up photography by accident, encouraged by Man Ray. She posed for him in 1921 and, soon after, became his assistant. Impressed by her instinctive ability, he allowed her to use his darkroom to develop her own work. Initially funded by Peggy Guggenheim, the American socialite and art-lover, she found her own studio, where her sitters included Jean Cocteau, André Gide and James Joyce alongside his wife Nora, his daughter Lucia, and his publisher Sylvia Beach. Many of Abbott’s early portraits were first shown on the walls of Beach’s famous Paris bookstore, Shakespeare and Company. “To be ‘done’ by Man Ray and Berenice Abbott meant you were rated as somebody,” Beach wrote in her memoir. From the beginning, Abbott was a formally ambitious photographer. Her use of stark settings, moody lighting and eye-level framing created a series of memorable portraits in which the subject’s presence is all. Soon, though, she had abandoned portraiture for images in which people were palpable only by their absence. On a trip back to New York in 1929, she was taken by the energy and momentum of the city. Returning there soon afterwards, she roamed the streets with a hand-held camera, recording shop fronts, street scenes and working people, perhaps influenced by the great Eugène Atget, whom she had met shortly before his death and whose reputation she worked tirelessly to ensure. In 1932, her aesthetic shifted and, using a large-format camera, she began photographing the architecture of the city in greater detail, often from dramatic points of view. She famously shot the Flatiron Building from below and Manhattan at night from above – perched on top of the Empire State Building. A now iconic book, Changing New York, appeared in 1939. By then, as her “manifesto” shows, she had the world of science in her sights. Abbott’s photographs offer an opportunity to reflect on not only the ways that science influences art, but also on how art influences science. Her images represent an unexpected melding of science and art, which produces an aesthetic that compels the viewer while also conveying scientific ideas.
“Her foresight is extraordinary,” says Burbridge, “given that she conceived her science photography project in 1939 and it was not really brought to fruition through proper funding until late 1958, when the Russian Sputnik was launched and American investment in science suddenly became intense.” Initially, Abbott sought out commercial assignments for companies such as Standard Oil and IBM. Simultaneously, she was experimenting with ways to photograph magnetism and electricity and, in her attic, inventing various photography machines, including a “Super Sight” camera that allowed her to enlarge an object’s projection before exposure rather than on a negative in the darkroom. In all this, she was self-taught and utterly meticulous, planning exposures to the second and employing stroboscopic lights to trace the trajectory of bouncing or swinging metal balls. Describing one of her wave pattern images, she said: “My idea was to do a Rayogram in motion. Moholy-Nagy and Man Ray had done pictures by putting objects on sensitized paper but I wanted to do the same thing in motion.” To this end, she placed a piece of light sensitive paper in the bottom of a developing tray and, as she put it “flashed the light”. The developed picture is both formally beautiful and mysterious. In 1944, she became the photographic editor of Science Illustrated and, in September of that year, made one of her most striking scientific photographs, a stark, almost modernist, delineation of the molecular structure of soap bubbles. Her breakthrough finally came in 1958, when she went for a job interview at the physical science study committee at MIT conducted by Dr Elbert P Little. “I told him that scientists were the worst photographers in the world,” she said. “They need the best – and I was the one.” A small selection of her ensuing photographs were subsequently published in 1960 in a groundbreaking American educational book called Physics, which was studied by millions of high school pupils.
Berenice Abbott notes:
Berenice Abbott quotes:
Berenice Abbott was one of the tiny horde of Midwestern Yankee Americans who in the 1920’s temporarily reversed the Course of Empire, and transferred the center of American cultural life to Paris. She arrived there in 1921 as a sculptor, and continued her studies with Emile Bourdelle. In 1923 she became an assistant in the photography studio of Man Ray, and two years later she first saw the photographs of Eugene Atget. She was irrevocably marked by the pure photographic authority of his work, and any remaining question as to her own life’s work was settled. In 1926 she opened her own portrait studio, and for the next three years photographed with honesty and grace the great and the famous of that city’s intellectual world. In Paris the supply of artists, artistic celebrities, and salonistes seemed inexhaustible, and Abbott photographed many of them. One of most moving of her portraits is one reproduced here of James Joyce.The grey, strangely lifeless, enveloping light finds its way everywhere, describing without emphasis or favor the writer’s stickpin, his hands, his right ear, his fine beaver hat, the deep tiredness of his elegant slouch. He seems the survivor of too difficult a battle, shell-shocked by the terrible labor of putting so many words in the precisely proper order. He was burdened at the time not only by exhaustion but by the pirating of his work, by his wife’s serious illness, by deadlines, and by his degenerating eyesight. He wrote to Harriet Shaw Weaver: “There are moments when I feel 20 but also half-hours when I feel 965.” Possibly he meant 969, Methuselah’s final age, but considering the precision of Joyce’s mind it is more likely that he meant he felt four years younger than that. Berenice Abbott (1898-1991) was an American photographer, whose best known works include New York cityscapes of the 1930’s. Less known is that, in addition to portraits and landscapes, Berenice was passionate about science photography. But who says that one needs to wear a lab coat in order to be an important contributor to science In order to capture motions that are too fast or too detailed for the human eye, she even invented special equipments to make the imaging possible, which she called “Super Sight.” “super sight” accurate portrait of scientific phenomena” Berenice worked two years at MIT, where she produced portraits of the principles of physical sciences, including mechanics, electromagnetism, and waves. Abbott’s photographs offer an opportunity to reflect on not only the ways that science influences art, but also on how art influences science. Her images represent an unexpected melding of science and art, which produces an aesthetic that compels the viewer while also conveying scientific ideas. assisting famed photographer Man Ray in his studio. Abbott began taking portrait photographs and opened her own studio in 1926. In addition to her pioneering work as a photographer, Abbott wrote and illustrated how-to books on photography, which later became standard guides for photographic techniques she also invented new photographic equipment and techniques, some of which she patented. She was one of the first photographers to join art and science in a significant way. Her leadrer/teachers man ray and Agtet inspired her documentative style of photography Berenice did a lot of work that would eventually be used for educational purposes. she blended the two ideas of photography being used as documentation and as an artform. changing newyork was near the begining of her carreer, was more reminisent of her portrait period. however she used dramatic framing to suggest a more emotional documentation of the world. she then went from documenting large items such as architechture, to working with small scall items in her scientific documetion.
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Photography helps people to see. The challenge for me has first been to see things as they are, whether a portrait, a city street, or a bouncing ball. In a word, I have tried to be objective. The camera is no more an instrument of preservation; the image is... Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium. It has to walk alone; it has to be itself. Does not the very word ‘creative’ mean to build, to initiate, to give out, to act - rather than to be acted upon, to be subjective? Living photography is positive in its approach, it sings a song of life - not death. There are many teachers who could ruin you. Before you know it you could be a pale copy of this teacher or that teacher.You have to evolve on your own. Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past.
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her work is very similar, in concept, to hiroshi sugimoto’s work. Both of these photographers were enthralled with scince and photographies ability to capture it. - Berenice abbotts work has a common theme throughout all of them. Movement of time, both large as seen in her series of new york images, and small shown in her scientific works. The images suggest the progression of time either through a linear series of photographs or through strabographic photography of objects in motion. Both the documentation of the city and the strobogrphic images have almost no blur; they are vivid and still. She was very fascinated by documenting the world as it was. - Hiroshi sugimoto . his work is opposite in how is chose to display the passage of time. He wanted to capture light over a large period of time and place it on one image. This created blurry images with strange details that seem to break the rules of physics. he was more aimed at capturing an image that would evoke the viewer to question its validity. He wanted to have the imagination and emotion play a role in his plan to turn the belief that photography is the only way to capture the truth. To him photography was an illusion. - This order of articles starts the reader on the path to discover the development of photography as a true form of documentation. The path unexpectedly leads them to photography’s wide spread use an artists tool to play on the viewers emotion. Adds an extra element of surprise to keep the readers attention. .
magazine order: •
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Susan sontag slidesThis article is placed first because it is placed as an introduction to the photography issue of abstract magazine. It provides insight as to what makes the artists, and their work, shown in the magazine, relevant. This forces the reader to become more engaged with the following articles. berenice abbott article. Mostly pics This article provides a nice break for the reader. They wont have to be flooded with reading; further more the reader will be immediately exposed to photographs, taken early in the medium’s use as an art. Hiroshi sugimoto article. Mixed. Feature article. Stands as the climax for the magazine.This article has an even balance between text and image. Allowing the reader to compare and contrast the medium and the works of the historical and modern photographer
Susan Sontag on photography notes: • • • • • • • • • •
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Godard’s Les Carabiniers (1963), A man reeals a case filled with photographs as others around him smoke cigars and shuffle through what he has to show from his tripp. A antiguidade! ( French) As piramides! (French) Os dolmans de carnac (french) O partenon Collusium O temple de ankor La toree de pisa Much of what susan speaks about is of movies. Many of the movies are considered to be art. However they are just a arge series of photographs, if one was to single put on eof those photographs then it would just be considered as documentation.Therefor this scene in the movie is suggestive of what is to come in the magazine. Photographs or being displayed during the scene and the actors think it is not valuable or art. However, the viewer in the thater is watching it all happen with the idea of it being art. Many of her works ae centered around the idea of war Chris Marker’s film, Si j’avais quatre dromadaires (1966), Virtuosi of the noble image like Alfred Stieglitz and Paul Strand, composing mighty, unforgettable photographs decade after decade, still want, first of all, to show something Farm Security Administration photographic project of the late 1930s images which idealize (like most fashion and animal photography) are no less aggressive than work which makes a virtue of plainness (like class pictures, still lifes of the bleaker sort, and mug shots) Possible draw doodles of each one David Octavius Hill and Julia Margaret Cameron who used the camera as a means of getting painterly images Her mission was to promote the international exchange of language and culture. She almost always writes by hand and only puts into type when it is time for the finished piece “It was not a question of knowledge . . . but of alertness, a fastidious transcription of what could be thought about something, once it swam into the stream of attention.”
Thinking With type: Letter Helvetica can be easily read when used in body tyoe and call outs due to its large x height. Use typeface mrs eaves for body as it adds delicate charm, however it will need a bit more kernning than Helvetica MR EAVES works well with mrs eaves and has a little bit less elegance to it What appears small on screen often appears much more legible once printed out. Adobe Garamond primier pro –(18 point) callouts*- is a nice typeface delevelped in the era of print typefaces. Holds a historic quality to it. Callouts (12/14point) bodytext (8/10 point) When developing a typeface that fits well look for a typefaced designed for early printmaking. Possibly for modern photographer use a typeface that was developed around digital type. Many typefaces when blown up in scale look deformed and thus shouldn’t be used for headers and titles. The larger the text the smaller the stroke weight. Diplay headline designed for 24 point font and larger. Basic text is designed for body type at a range of 9-14 point Caption styles are beefy and designed to be displayed at 6 to 8 point The more modern a font gets the more distant from calligraphy appearance and abstracted it will become. sabon(humanist) Bakersville(traditional) Bodoni(modern) Gil sans (humanist sans serif) Helvetica (transitional sans serif) Future (modern sans serif) Slanted italics is more of a modern font. It looks unnatural. True small caps is elegant (humanist) scala pro Big light type with small heavy type, when combining multiple typefaces Scale
Thinking With type: Grid - The golden ratio: the smaller of the two elements, relates to the larger element in the same way that the larger elements relates to the two parts combined. Ratio of the golden section is 1 : 1.618 - Multicolumn grids provide flexible formats for publications that have a complex hierarchy. - An element can fill one column or it can span many, not all of the space has to be filled. - Elements with varying widths are staggered within the structure of the grid. - Hanglines, or datums, are horizontal grids that provide a common ground for elements to hang on. - Modular grid has a consistant horizontal and verticle divisions from top to bottom - Karl Gerstner’s modular grid is an example of the endless variations of number of hanglines and columns. - Baseline grid is a grid that spans over all document sizes. Adjustments of margins to rid of incomplete columns and hanglines. - Choose line spaceing that works with the baseline grid. 18/24 for headlines. 14/18 for subheads. 8/12 for captions. - Text frames automatically align with baseline grid in indesign if you go to object, selct text frame options, baseline options and choose leading.
Thinking With type: Text - Kernning is the adjustment of space between two letters. - Combinations of letters create uneven spacing through out the word. Letters that slant or face one another are most often in need of kernning (w, y , v, t) - Metric kernning, uses kernning tables that have been built into the typeface. Select it the layout setting and it will work well, espescially with small sizes. - The page layout program executes optical kernning automatically. As opposed to the typefaces programmed metric kerning. - Many designers use optical kerning for headlines and metric kerning for text - Tracking: adjustment of the overall space of a group of letters. - Can be used to whole lines to create a airy more open field. - Can be used on single words to emphasize or add contrast. - Avoid tightly tracking letters. Loosely tracking lowercase letters look awkward. They were designed to be placed closely together. - Tracking is also known as letterspacing. - Avoind tightly tracked body text - Linespacing: the distance from the baseline of one line of text to another. - Linespacing is also known as leading. - Default line spaceing is 120 percent of the text size. For font size 10 point leading would be 12 point - As lines paceing becomes more loose, lines of text start to become individual graphic elements. - Alignment can be justified, centered or ragged columns. - Justified text is clean. It can create awkward gaps between words. Leading can help diminish those gaps by adding extra words onto a line. - Flush left/ragged right. This allows the text to flow organically and avoids uneven spacing between words. - Flush right/ragged left. Can look unfamiliar and may distrust the flow of the page if spaced poorly. - It can add a nice break for captions and subheaders - Rotating the text rather than stacking it to create vertical text. No rule says that text must flow left to right. - Paragraphs should be created to break up bodies of text. - Indents used must line up to have equal spacing. - Avoid indenting the opening paragraph, as there is no need for a break there
- Additionally adding a space between paragraphs create a break. It also is a good way to fill up empty space. - The beginging of a text must signal a reader to begin reading. This was done in medieval times by enlarging capitals. Also called versals - Hierarchy is determined by the organization of content. - Hierarchy is a guide for the reader to follow signaling them were to look and what to read. Can be created with spacing, or graphic elements. - Changing color, font or even typefaces of words and phrases in body text, will add emphasis.
a noir style of documenting a photographer
A more trendy style of design for a magazine cover.
the texture of the background was what dre me to this mag cover.
the logotyope used to create this title uses three basic shapes to create the entire word “billboard�
Magazine cover inspirations
the only part of this cover that i like is yhe ediyting of the photograph. it keeps a color scheme of only two tones.
using characters to create a unique graphic
I only chose this cover due to the use of a photograph that appears to be a painting at first glance
the use of a diaganol line to make jay-z apear to be popping out of the frma is nice. the style is not my favortie thou
the mix between 90’s graphics and architectural photography scream this magazine is all about urban skateboarding
withhout showing more than two features playboy was able to suggest who and what this magazine is about.
honestly just the use mix of illustration and photography is nice. nit to mention the iconic wink I-D has on every cover.
seems to be another basic magazine cover at first. however there is more than meets the eye.
Magazine cover inspirations
i like it when your eye can follow a line that is created by tollaging two images. I think the nose and cheek of the illustrations follows the rail down the line.
found this in a boook on design. i am draw to it do to it’s use of negative space.
the colors are what draw my eye to this design, ii think an effect like this can only be achieved by making it physically
my favorite designer is pontus alv and this is a prime example ofd his style. I find a lot inspiration in his work.
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Esquire magazine is praised for its successful attempts at being innovative; this includes the topics chosen for issues, creative styles of writing, and unique graphics displayed on the cover and on the insides of each issue. their logotype is very similar in style to that of rolling stone’s it was a mens magazine founded in the 1940’s that found its fame from the use of what they call Varga girls covers. just becauase it is a men’s magazine does not mean that it should be storred in an old shoebox under a bed. It is of a higher class. Meant only to be read by those who find pride in themselves. contains a little bit of everything. from fashion to humour. to be a man who read this magazine meant you were a gentlmen. According to the NYT, this type of man no longer exists. The first thing that comes to my mind when i think of esquire magazine, is james bond. It has beautiful graphics, great stories, some more mature themes and, of course, the best dressed men in the world. it is now thought of as nostalgic, a thing that defined the past but cannot hold up to the trendy standards of today. like everything else, it wont last forever. it was founded by the hearst company, by the likes of Arnold Gingrich, David A. Smart and Henry L. Jackson. each one of the covers for the magazine displayed the subject in a classy manor, no matter whatthe feature article was about. the designers were what made this magazine classsy. they took what everyother mens magazine had and made it all look presentable. grit would be a good word to describe the type of man who would read some of their issues. just because it was marketed for men didn’t mean that others weren’t welcome
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First known as the man behind harbers bazaar magazine. Worked to help define what is now known as modern design. much of his style is similar to that of picasso. He works with graphics the same way a painter works with emotions. He tries to suggest something to the viewer without outwordly stating his ideas. he was born in russia and moved to the united states to help teach students, and build a carreer, in advertising. His work in this field was noticed and he was imeadiatly brought into the light of greaphic design/ publication design. many of the artists he worked with to create harpers bazaar, were those who were known for their visually striking works of art. An example of one of those artists would be salvador dali. his early work was cluttered with information and had little breathing room but over time he began to work with a more minimalist style. he also created a design magazzine called portfolio, which ran for three issues. they were widely accepted for their achievements in design. he worked as a teacher in graphic design for years. not teaching a method of design; however, he taught the students how to think creatively and tap into their true potential. he was the kind of teacher who thought it was better to fail by experimenting rather than fail by not trying. some of his spreads were designed so beautifully and that was due to the way that he layed the type onto the page. he was a typesetting genius, reflecting the form of the photograph into the path to which he set his type he moved to paris not the united states, to begin his new career. which i can now see is how he gained his love for fashion and abstract paintings.. his work resembled that of the avant-garde. he had no ties to the movement, it was just how it happened to be. this made much of his work come into high demand. He was awarded an achievement for a piece that belnded the lines between two colors; black and white. many ddesigners around his time were very conservative and took no risks when it came to design. He chose to explore other options. he believed in experimenting with works, the only way to make something original is to let it create itself through your own experiments,
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A Typeface designer, who designed many typefaces for popular magazines; this includes Harper’s Bazaar. He also created a typeface for macOS called Hoefler font. Was more centered aournd the design of digital fonts. started hoefler and co,. a company that designs typefaces. Tobias Frere-Jones works closly with jonathan and he is about to come to kansas to have a talk anout type “Discovering as an adolescent that typography was incredibly coded—that choice of typeface could tell you the genre of a movie before you read the title— was irresistible,” hoefler was fascinated with coding and technology. he found his calling while trying to discover what made digital tyoefaces appear on our screens.. he began his career at the age of 19, roughly three years ahead of me. he had been working his entire life with type. Teaching himself everything that there is to know about it. he later went to work for a more modern version of harper’s bazzaar. It maintained its same elegance dispite being created by code rather than by hand. he continued his career by attending rhode island school of design. designed many fonts such as gotham. hoefler and co was previously known as hoefler and frere jones. but a lawsuit tour them apart. much of the typefaces that he desgned were straying away from the humanist style of type. It had less ascendors and was better fit for a reader on a digital platform. this isnt to say that he didnt try to kick the old style out. Some of his typefaces look a little more traditional and the most famous of thouse would be knockout. I couldn’t think of anything more depressing than spending years of your life working on a new design, only to see it showcased as nothing more than an alphabet at twelve point his fonts have repitition to them, allowing for a designer to use them as a way to create harmony between elements. This also allows for less time to be spent kernning the typer.
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A Publication designer, who has received awards for her designs that use type as a graphic element, rather than just words. Thought outside the box. worked with the illustrious and dear Fred Woodward at Rolling Stone thoght of type as another tool for illustration. used typed to create elaborate mosaics and graphics. uses a lot of color and shapes in her type designs erved as Creative Director of Design at SpotCo, a New York City advertising agency that creates artwork for Broadway and institutional theater. received awards from major design organizations, including the Society of Publication Designers, the Type Directors Club, AIGA, The Art Directors Club, Graphis, Communication Arts, and Print. wrote a book called type tells tales “A fresh look at typographic design as an art and as a storytelling device that expresses narratives, emotions, and voice” looks at design through the eyes of a visual artist. she sees each one of her designs as a puzzle that she has to put together piece by piece. each element holds a specific meaning and helps to hold the entire piece together, thinks that the best work is what comes from working with others. if you work alone you can get stuck inside a box.
David Carson •
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Known for his typographic layout style used in the magazine “raygun”. Most known for his style called “grunge typography” has a style that is more oldfashioned. or pre-technology. uses humour in his designs. its his way of having fun with what he has been doing. kinda holds a grudge against what design has become. ; the idea that simplicity is beauty isnt always true. you can tell the reader what you want them to nkow but you can use creativity to suggest ither things such as emotion. his work is very much so expressive in nature, it shouldnt always be so easy to read. design shouldnt be so conservative. it shouldnt be as corporate and filled with as many rules as many people believe. his works have a lot of power, to leave the viewer with a memorible expierince. he wanted the viewer of raygun to read the articles and try to inturprit it. it should be like art something that fills your mind with questions. dont show what people have already seen a million times. there is always something that people havent seen. in a publication the order of spreads matter. it helps to create a solid narritive that doesnt contradict itslef.
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doesnt take design so seriously, you shoulnt have an ego as designer. there is no correct way to design, but there is just simply less effective ways to design. improvement power and motion of graphic design you have to put yourself into yourwork, its the only way to enjoy create unique work grunge really only worked for him he is very laid back, doesnt take anything to seriously. especially design, design isnt life or death. No matter what you chose to make you wont die. the end of print, the grafik design of david carson. to me it seems as if his gial is to do anything that will make traditional designers upset. he is much like neville brody with his style and attitude. Exceot he is a bit more friendly about it. worked with a famous magazine called transworld skate magazine. these tyoes of magazines belong soley to the alt culture. they are designed in a way that would upset a designer from esquire magazine. a lot of his newer work is less grungy. it still has the anti design theme to it. they projects are all cut up and spliced together to create one mad print. a lot of hand lettering and doodles created to make the soreads for many of his magazines.
Tibor Kalman and what is M&Co
Neville Brody
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Designer who started color magazine and later a design company known as M&Co. he worked with a diverse range of clients ranging from musicians to magazines. M&Co is said to be characterized as “imaginative and whitty New York design firm that became a social prod to his major clients as much as a graphics resource, Mr. Kalman was also the former editor in chief of Colors magazine, an art director and a director of music videos and television commercials. people call him a self titled “bad boy” he used design to speak for what he believed in was a social activists who put his own personality into his designs, he was not afraid of speaking his mind didnt fear what others would say to him, as he knew he everyone else probably had an equally strong opion at what he created. He was just the only one to speak out. founded M&Co Labs, which conceived and manufactured watches and clocks with quirky faces and rearranged numerals, products that helped start a fashion for such designer-made objects he was like andy warhol. he had the ideas just didnt have the technical skills to put them into fruition. he hired others to do the physical work for him sometimes. M&Co designed a Talking Heads album that featured four digitally manipulated photographs of the group members designers are reponsible for their own works and whatever it may affect. he was more of a creative director moving away from the trade of graphic design worked to produce and design exhibits, videos and books that had social relevance.
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A graphic designer and typographer who worked on covers for magazines and album covers. Wanted his style to appear as unique and uncommercialized as possible. designed many font that i would describe as nin inch nail themed, fonts such as: blur, autotrace and dirty four. many of these fonts were less legible than many other typefaces. this style is just as kegibke in other ways, it doesnt use traditional language to express the ideas and beliefs. It used originality and emotion to suggest legibility. he formed Neville Brody Studio, now Research Studios founding member of the London based type foundry Fontworks He was also a major contributor to FUSE, which was a publication about the practice of experimental typography another example of how the computer can be used as a tool to create. after doing this research I have learned that anything can be used as a tool for design and you shouldnt base your entire body of works off the use of one machine. expierementing is a main point that alll of these designers have held close to their hearts. deisgn should be a place to play and create. afterall it is art, not just organizartion. a lot of his works are similar to that of david carsons. did many record covers and one of those happen to be for the band depeche mode. his teavhers often condemned him for being uncommercial. this would lead to his success as a designer. breaking the rules, just a little bit. Known for his work on Face Magazine had a book called “the Graphic language of neville brody” one of the best known graphic design books. rebranded the bbc logo in 2011 “design is more than just a few tricks to the eye, its tricks to the brain”. design has become safe, and over commercialised. it has forgotten its roots. held a festival called the anti-design festival. with hopes of sparking creative fires and exploring spaces deemed out of bounds. quoted as being “like david bowie” his work is consistantly unique and fresh
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Dominated typography for a period of time with his typeface and magazine “avant Garde”. He took to design as a passion and spoke of himself as if he was still a student. He knew that to be original you must never call yourself a master, you just needed to continue learning and researching. 1980 AIGA award medalists. “typography” is not a word Lubalin thought should be applied to his work. “What I do is not really typography, which I think of as an essentially mechanical means of putting characters down on a page. It’s designing with letters. Aaron Burns called it, ‘typographics,’ and since you’ve got to put a name on things to make them memorable, ‘typographics’ is as good a name for what I do as any.” he pushed beyond the boundary of what many would call good taste. worked on fact magazine, very similar in importance to that of esquire magazine. just as i am he was colorblind. color is not all that matters, when making a design its the emotion that matters. much like the other designers, herb, stood for what he believed ina and put himself into his works. he was also a social activist and ould use his voice in graphic design to make whatever change he could. words arent always enough to make a change. the way we speak is going to affect the way that people iunderstand what we mean. you can do the same thing through the process of editing or designing your emotions into the characters, he pushed beyond the established norm of copy-driven advertising and added a new dimension did logotypes for NYNY, cooper union, Famalies readers digest, and leggs he had a typographic journal called, U&lc. upper and lower case he magazine was an effort to display and advertise for the latest typefaces from ITC, which was the first type foundry to have nothing to do with the production of metal type. part of the founding team called ITC (international typeface corporation. Avant Garde Gothic, is a type family based on the logotype lubalin did for avant garde magazine
three titles: Ancient Illusion bound existence suggested existence
subtitles The work of hiroshi Sugimoto
three titles: Ancient Illusion the work of Hiroshi Sugiumoto bound existence The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto suggested existence The work of hiroshi Sugimoto
three titles: GIl sans
three titles: GIl sans
Ancient Illusion
Ancient Illusion The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
Bound Existence
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The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
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The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
Suggested Existence The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
three titles: GIl sans
three titles: GIl sans
Ancient Illusion
Ancient Illusion The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
Bound Existence
Bound Existence The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
Suggested Existence
The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
Suggested Existence The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
three titles: DIN Alternate Bold Ancient Illusion
three titles: Futura Ancient Illusion
The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
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The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
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The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
three titles: Arial
three titles: Futura
Ancient Illusion
The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
Bound Existence
Ancient Illusion
The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
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The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
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Suggested Exis tence
The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
three titles: Futura
three titles: GIl sans
Ancient Illusion
Ancient Illusion
Bound Existence
Bound Existence
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Suggested Existence
The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
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The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
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three titles: Helvetica
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three titles: Courier New
three titles: Helvetica
Ancient Illusion
Ancient Illusion
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Suggested Existence
The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
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The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
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three titles: Helvetica Neue
Ancient Illusion The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
Ancient Illusion
Bound Existence The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
Bound Existence
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three titles: Helvetica Neue
three titles: Helvetica Neue
Ancient Illusion The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
Ancient Illusion
Bound Existence The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
Bound Existence
Suggested Existence The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
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The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
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three titles: Helvetica Neue
three titles: Geneva
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The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
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The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
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Most children heading to the beach tend to be preoccupied with sandcastles and ice cream, but Hiroshi Sugimoto was no ordinary child. On this particular day he was experiencing a mini existential crisis and also sowing the seeds for a future project that would make him a hugely respected, and bankable, photographer. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is preimagined in my noodle To trace Sugimoto’s path from a young boy growing up in post-war Japan to the artist we know today is to follow a photographer who is supremely dedicated to the classic medium of photography. For the “Seascapes” series (which he began in the early 1980s), Sugimoto used a large-format camera to capture the vast expanse of our oceans, shooting at night with long exposure times. It was a period of deep reflection. Staring at the horizon Sugimoto often imagined himself to be anywhere, at any time. “I consider photography as a machine that allows me to go back and forth through time,” he says. “As a medium though, it’s only been 170 years or so since its invention. For that long, many people believed what they saw was reality, but now with the introduction of digital photography, the form has become the same as painting. You can manipulate anything you want. That’s why I call digital photography a different medium. It’s not photography.” Sugimoto’s answer may seem curt, but he is anything but. Dressed impeccably in a light blue cotton shirt and dark blue blazer, he is soft-spoken and disarmingly polite. He’s in Hong Kong to give a talk at the Asia Society’s Arts and Museum Summit, and
I consider photography as a machine that allows me to go back and forth through time
is enjoying his first hours back in the city he last visited more than half a century ago. “It was 1962. I was a 14-year-old high school kid,” he says, chuckling at the memory. “I remember Hong Kong well, but what’s this? It’s totally changed. It’s been destroyed. There are skyscrapers and …” The thought trails off into the distance, out to sea perhaps. It’s here that we discuss how human figures rarely feature in his work. In fact, the only “people” he has shot are waxwork models of long-dead monarchs for his “Portraits” series. Asked whether he likes to shoot portraits of living people, his answer is
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The perception of human existence. How do you read what is outside your body Most children heading to the beach tend to be preoccupied with sandcastles and ice cream, but Hiroshi Sugimoto was no ordinary child. On this particular day he was experiencing a mini existential crisis and also sowing the seeds for a future project that would make him a hugely respected, and bankable, photographer. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is pre-imagined in my noodle To trace Sugimoto’s path from a young boy growing up in post-war Japan to the artist we know today is to follow a photographer who is supremely dedicated to the classic medium of photography. For the “Seascapes” series (which he began in the early 1980s), Sugimoto used a large-format camera to capture the vast expanse of our oceans, shooting at night with long exposure times. It was a period of deep reflection. Staring at the horizon Sugimoto often imagined himself to be anywhere, at any time. “I consider photography as a machine that allows me to go back and forth through time,” he says. “As a medium though, it’s only been 170 years or so since its invention. For that long, many people believed what they saw was reality, but now with the introduction of digital photography, the form has become the same as painting. You can manipulate anything you want. That’s why I call digital photography a different medium. It’s not photography.” Sugimoto’s answer may seem curt, but he is anything but. Dressed impeccably in a light blue cotton shirt and dark blue blazer, he is soft-spoken and disarmingly polite. He’s in Hong Kong to give a talk at the Asia Society’s Arts and Museum Summit, and is enjoying his first hours back in the city he last visited more than half a century ago. “It was 1962. I was a 14-year-old high school kid,” he says, chuckling at the memory. “I remember Hong Kong well, but what’s this? It’s totally changed. It’s been destroyed. There are skyscrapers and …” The thought trails off into the distance, out to sea perhaps. It’s here that we discuss how human figures rarely feature in his work. In fact, the only “people” he has shot are waxwork models of long-dead monarchs for his “Portraits” series. Asked whether he likes to shoot portraits of living people, his answer is blackly comic: “Please die first, be turned into 88
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in the final image, which is reflected in his personal nature but at odds with his upbringing. “Quite the contrary,” he says, resolutely. “I was born in 1948, not long after the Japanese surrender. Tokyo had been heavily bombed, and my house was only temporary. There were 30 or 40 people sleeping in one room so it was very chaotic.” My first traceable memory is the seascape and the sharp line made by the horizon. I was about four years old and my family and I were on a train heading to a resort for the summer. I thought how beautiful the scene was and then I realized: ‘I am here. I am conscious. But who am I?’ After that, my memory just fades away into the darkness.” Hiroshi Sugimoto is best known for his large-format photographs of dioramas, seascapes and buildings, but he is also a collector and was once an antiquities dealer. He talks to Apollo about the links between his collection and his art, and about capturing the passing of time. Sugimoto is a master of the long exposure and the large-format camera; the scenes are static and preserved, but in the true black and white tones of his gelatin silver prints, they are not entirely lifeless, either. Sugimoto’s ability to trick the eye – even in just an instant – juxtaposed with his open acknowledgement of the scene’s artificiality, demonstrates both his playful curiosity and also his rigorous technique. ‘The stuffed animals positioned before painted backdrops looked utterly fake,’ Sugimoto has said before of the Dioramas photographs. ‘Yet by taking a quick peek with one eye closed, all perspective vanished, and suddenly they looked very real. I’d found a way to see the world as a camera does. However fake the subject, once photographed, it’s as good as real.’ Sugimoto speaks both English and Japanese but is, unsurprisingly, most comfortable expressing himself visually. As he walks me through a list of what’s been packed off and what still remains here, he makes a point of showing me precisely what the value of each object is to him. He flips to an illustration of a woman’s rib cage in the French anatomy book. ‘This looks like a beautiful lady being opened while she is alive,’ he says, pointing to her face, which, it’s true, is expressive and aware despite the fact that her back is spliced open to reveal the bones and tissues. ‘On the contrary,’ Sugimoto says, ‘in British 18th-century anatomy books, the body’s expressions are completely dead. But this is almost like an angel – an angel being opened.’ a fossil is just like a photograph. ‘One side is negative, one side is positive. Same thing.’ Sugimoto is much more Zen about his practice of collecting than he is about his art. But obsession goes some way to explain his owning, for example, early editions of Isaac Newton’s Optics and the Principia Mathematics. ‘I can study them,’ Sugimoto explains to me patiently. ‘I just want to stay with them and I want to live with them. Some collectors want to buy [something] at auction and put it in storage and put it back to auction after a few years – as if it’s just investment. I’m interested in how the human eye captures images and reads the images and makes meaning out of them,’ he says. ‘So, in general, I just want to know what is going on in our world. And how a human being is aware of the outside of himself or herself. As a photographer, that’s what I was interested in in the first place: the perception of human existence. How do you read what is outside your body?’ Sugimoto is not concerned with making his own work appear timeless; he is more interested in capturing an idea of history – a precise sensation of weight that time can create – with an image. When I ask Sugimoto if he worries that the human lifespan is too short a time to do everything we might want to do, he is charmingly unfazed. ‘Well, living to 100 is nothing,’ he says. He raises his arm to the window: ‘The Empire State Building on Manhattan island – it probably won’t survive for more than 200 or 300 years. The age expectation of concrete is probably 100, 200 years old. It will deteriorate. Through my collection I get a sense of time, of the passage of time, the history, the meaning of history. I just want to feel it through the object.’
Most children heading to the beach tend to be preoccupied with sandcastles and ice cream, but Hiroshi Sugimoto was no ordinary child. On this particular day he was experiencing a mini existential crisis and also sowing the seeds for a future project that would make him a hugely respected, and bankable, photographer. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is preimagined in my noodle To trace Sugimoto’s path from a young boy growing up in post-war Japan to the artist we know today is to follow a photographer who is supremely dedicated to the classic medium of photography. For the “Seascapes” series (which he began in the early 1980s), Sugimoto used a large-format camera to capture the vast expanse of our oceans, shooting at night with long exposure times. It was a period of deep reflection. Staring at the horizon Sugimoto often imagined himself to be anywhere, at any time. “I consider photography as a machine that allows me to go back and forth through time,” he says. “As a medium though, it’s only been 170 years or so since its invention. For that long, many people believed what they saw was reality, but now with the introduction of digital photography, the form has become the same as painting. You can manipulate anything you want. That’s why I call digital photography a different medium. It’s not photography.” Sugimoto’s answer may seem curt, but he is anything but. Dressed impeccably in a light blue cotton shirt and dark blue blazer, he is soft-spoken and disarmingly polite. He’s in Hong Kong to give a talk at the Asia Society’s Arts and Museum Summit, and is enjoying his first hours back in the city he last visited more than half a century ago. “It was 1962. I was a 14-year-old high school kid,” he says, chuckling at the memory. “I remember Hong Kong well, but what’s this? It’s totally changed. It’s been destroyed. There are skyscrapers and …” The thought trails off into the distance, out to sea perhaps. It’s here that we discuss how human figures rarely feature in his work. In fact, the only “people” he has shot are waxwork models of long-dead monarchs for his “Portraits” series. Asked whether he likes to shoot portraits of living people, his answer is blackly comic: “Please die first, be turned into wax, and then come back. Usually my exposure times are around 20 minutes and at a small aperture. Nobody can sit for that long.” Still, it’s hard not to feel Sugimoto is just not that interested in living people as prime subject matter. After all, alongside “Seascapes” his most interesting and well-known works are his architectural photos (geometrical and usually blurred) and his long-exposure pictures of the inside of cinemas, in “Theatres”. For that series, he set the exposure time to the exact length of the film, resulting in gorgeously rendered interiors with a single uniform white light where the picture on the screen should be. No people, no faces - just time and light. Add some water and you have the essence of life itself. “Apart from the sea, which is alive, everything I shoot is dead or man-made.” This apparent disinterest in people (in his art, not in his life) is markedly different from the two other great Japanese photographers of the second half of the 20th century. Daidô Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki, both of whom were born a decade before Sugimoto, chose a different route, preferring to shoot everyone and anyone - from businessmen to down-and-outs - in styles that tended to be closer to exposé and documentary: wild, energetic, chaotic, and hyper sexual. It was Araki who said that photography was like penetration, a philosophy Sugimoto disagrees with. “I don’t like that style at all. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is pre-imagined in my noodle,” he says, tapping his head. “Reality can be made according to my own imagination. I don’t have to go out and search. There shouldn’t be surprises.” This patient approach to his work results in a striking serenity
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Fossils are just like photography
Most children heading to the beach tend to be preoccupied with sandcastles and ice cream, but Hiroshi Sugimoto was no ordinary child. On this particular day he was experiencing a mini existential crisis and also sowing the seeds for a future project that would make him a hugely respected, and bankable, photographer. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is preimagined in my noodle To trace Sugimoto’s path from a young boy growing up in post-war Japan to the artist we know today is to follow a photographer who is supremely dedicated to the classic medium of photography. For the “Seascapes” series (which he began in the early 1980s), Sugimoto used a large-format camera to capture the vast expanse of our oceans, shooting at night with long exposure times. It was a period of deep reflection. Staring at the horizon Sugimoto often imagined himself to be anywhere, at any time. “I consider photography as a machine that allows me to go back and forth through time,” he says. “As a medium though, it’s only been 170 years or so since its invention. For that long, many people believed what they saw was reality, but now with the introduction of digital photography, the form has become the same as painting. You can manipulate anything you want. That’s why I call digital photography a different medium. It’s not photography.” Sugimoto’s answer may seem curt, but he is anything but. Dressed impeccably in a light blue cotton shirt and dark blue blazer, he is soft-spoken and disarmingly polite. He’s in Hong Kong to give a talk at the Asia Society’s Arts and Museum Summit, and is enjoying his first hours back in the city he last visited more than half a century ago. “It was 1962. I was a 14-year-old high school kid,” he says, chuckling at the memory. “I remember Hong Kong well, but what’s this? It’s totally changed. It’s been destroyed. There are skyscrapers and …” The thought trails off into the distance, out to sea perhaps. It’s here that we discuss how human figures rarely feature in his work. In fact, the only “people” he has shot are waxwork models of long-dead monarchs for his “Portraits” series. Asked whether he likes to shoot portraits of living people, his answer is blackly comic: “Please die first, be turned into wax, and then come back. Usually my exposure times are around 20 minutes and at a small aperture. Nobody can sit for that long.” Still, it’s hard not to feel Sugimoto is just not that interested in living people as prime subject matter. After all, alongside “Seascapes” his most interesting and well-known works are his architectural photos (geometrical and usually blurred) and his long-exposure pictures of the inside of cinemas, in “Theatres”. For that series, he set the exposure time to the exact length of the film, resulting in gorgeously rendered interiors with a single uniform white light where the picture on the screen should be. No people, no faces - just time and light. Add some water and you have the essence of life itself. “Apart from the sea, which is alive, everything I shoot is dead or man-made.” This apparent disinterest in people (in his art, not in his life) is markedly different from the two other great Japanese photogra-
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phers of the second half of the 20th century. Daidô Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki, both of whom were born a decade before Sugimoto, chose a different route, preferring to shoot everyone and anyone - from businessmen to down-and-outs - in styles that tended to be closer to exposé and documentary: wild, energetic, chaotic, and hyper sexual. It was Araki who said that photography was like penetration, a philosophy Sugimoto disagrees with. “I don’t like that style at all. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is pre-imagined in my noodle,” he says, tapping his head. “Reality can be made according to my own imagination. I don’t have to go out and search. There shouldn’t be surprises.” This patient approach to his work results in a striking serenity in the final image, which is reflected in his personal nature but at odds with his upbringing. “Quite the contrary,” he says, resolutely. “I was born in 1948, not long after the Japanese surrender. Tokyo had been heavily bombed, and my house was only temporary. There were 30 or 40 people sleeping in one room so it was very chaotic.” My first traceable memory is the seascape and the sharp line made by the horizon. I was about four years old and my family and I were on a train heading to a resort for the summer. I thought how beautiful the scene was and then I realized: ‘I am here. I am conscious. But who am I?’ After that, my memory just fades away into the darkness.” Hiroshi Sugimoto is best known for his large-format photographs of dioramas, seascapes and buildings, but he is also a collector and was once an antiquities dealer. He talks to Apollo about the links between his collection and his art, and about capturing the passing of time. Sugimoto is a master of the long exposure and the large-format camera; the scenes are static and preserved, but in the true black and white tones of his gelatin silver prints, they are not entirely lifeless, either. Sugimoto’s ability to trick the eye – even in just an instant – juxtaposed with his open acknowledgement of the scene’s artificiality, demonstrates both his playful curiosity and also his rigorous technique. ‘The stuffed animals positioned before painted backdrops looked utterly fake,’ Sugimoto has said before of the Dioramas photographs. ‘Yet by taking a quick peek with one eye closed, all perspective vanished, and suddenly they looked very real. I’d found a way to see the world as a camera does. However fake the subject, once photographed, it’s as good as real.’ Sugimoto speaks both English and Japanese but is, unsurprisingly, most comfortable expressing himself visually. As he walks me through a list of what’s been packed off and what still remains here, he makes a point of showing me precisely what the value of each object is to him. He flips to an illustration of a woman’s rib cage in the French anatomy book. ‘This looks like a beautiful lady being opened while she is alive,’ he says, pointing to her face, which, it’s true, is expressive and aware despite the fact that her back is spliced open to reveal the bones and tissues. ‘On the contrary,’ Sugimoto says, ‘in British 18th-century anatomy books, the body’s expressions are completely dead. But this is almost like an angel – an angel being opened.’
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picture on the screen should be. No people, no faces - just time and light. Add some water and you have the essence of life itself. “Apart from the sea, which is alive, everything I shoot is dead or man-made.” This apparent disinterest in people (in his art, not in his life) is markedly different from the two other great Japanese photographers of the second half of the 20th century. Daidô Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki, both of whom were born a decade before Sugimoto, chose a different route, preferring to shoot everyone and anyone from businessmen to down-and-outs - in styles that tended to be closer to exposé and documentary: wild, energetic, chaotic, and hyper sexual. It was Araki who said that photography was like penetration, a philosophy Sugimoto disagrees with. “I don’t like that style at all. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is pre-imagined in my noodle,” he says, tapping his head. “Reality can be made according to my own imagination. I don’t have to go out and search. There shouldn’t be surprises.” This patient approach to his work results in a striking serenity in the final image, which is reflected in his personal nature but at odds with his upbringing. “Quite the contrary,” he says, resolutely. “I was born in 1948, not long after the Japanese surrender. Tokyo had been heavily bombed, and my house was only temporary. There were 30 or 40 people sleeping in one room so it was very chaotic.” My first traceable memory is the seascape and the sharp line made by the horizon. I was about four years old and my family and I were on a train heading to a resort for the summer. I thought how beautiful the scene was and then I realized: ‘I am here. I am conscious. But who am I?’ After that, my memory just fades away into the darkness.” Hiroshi Sugimoto is best known for his large-format photographs of dioramas, seascapes and buildings, but he is also a collector and was once an antiquities dealer. He talks to Apollo about the links between his collection and his art, and about capturing the passing of time. Sugimoto is a master of the long exposure and the large-format camera; the scenes are static and preserved, but in the true black and white tones of his gelatin silver prints, they are not entirely lifeless, either. Sugimoto’s ability to trick the eye – even in just an instant juxtaposed
I consider photography as a machine that allows me to go back and forth through time
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I consider photography as a MACHINE that allows me to go back and forth THROUGH TIME picture on the screen should be. No people, no faces - just time and light. Add some water and you have the essence of life itself. “Apart from the sea, which is alive, everything I shoot is dead or man-made.” This apparent disinterest in people (in his art, not in his life) is markedly different from the two other great Japanese photographers of the second half of the 20th century. Daidô Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki, both of whom were born a decade before Sugimoto, chose a different route, preferring to shoot everyone and anyone - from businessmen to down-and-outs - in styles that tended to be closer to exposé and documentary: wild, energetic, chaotic, and hyper sexual. It was Araki who said that photography was like penetration, a philosophy Sugimoto disagrees with. “I don’t like that style at all. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is pre-imagined in my noodle,” he says, tapping his head. “Reality can be made according to my own imagination. I don’t have to go out and search. There shouldn’t be surprises.” This patient approach to his work results in a striking serenity in the final image, which is reflected in his personal nature but at odds with his upbringing. “Quite the contrary,” he says, resolutely. “I was born in 1948, not long after the Japanese surrender. Tokyo had been heavily bombed, and my house was only temporary. There were 30 or 40 people sleeping in one room so it was very chaotic.” My first traceable memory is the seascape and the sharp line made by the horizon. I was about four years old and my family and I were on a train heading to a resort for the summer. I thought how beautiful the scene was and then I realized: ‘I am here. I am conscious. But who am I?’ After that, my memory just fades away into the darkness.” Hiroshi Sugimoto is best known for his large-format photographs of dioramas, seascapes and buildings, but he is also a collector and was once an antiquities dealer. He talks to Apollo about the links between his collection and his art, and about capturing the passing of time. Sugimoto is a master of the long exposure and the large-format camera; the scenes are static and preserved, but in the true black
Ancient Illusion The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
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abstract
Most children heading to the beach tend to be preoccupied with sandcastles and ice cream, but Hiroshi Sugimoto was no ordinary child. On this particular day he was experiencing a mini existential crisis and also sowing the seeds for a future project that would make him a hugely respected, and bankable, photographer. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is preimagined in my noodle To trace Sugimoto’s path from a young boy growing up in post-war Japan to the artist we know today is to follow a photographer who is supremely dedicated to the classic medium of photography. For the “Seascapes” series (which he began in the early 1980s), Sugimoto used a large-format camera to capture the vast expanse of our oceans, shooting at night with long exposure times. It was a period of deep reflection. Staring at the horizon Sugimoto often imagined himself to be anywhere, at any time. “I consider photography as a machine that allows me to go back and forth through time,” he says. “As a medium though, it’s only been 170 years or so since its invention. For that long, many people believed what they saw was reality, but now with the introduction of digital photography, the form has become the same as painting. You can manipulate anything you want. That’s why I call digital photography a different medium. It’s not photography.” Sugimoto’s answer may seem curt, but he is anything but. Dressed impeccably in a light blue cotton shirt and dark blue blazer, he is soft-spoken and disarmingly polite. He’s in Hong Kong to give a talk at the Asia Society’s Arts and Museum Summit, and is enjoying his first hours back in the city he last visited more than half a century ago. “It was 1962. I was a 14-year-old high school kid,” he says, chuckling at the memory. “I remember Hong Kong well, but what’s this? It’s totally changed. It’s been destroyed. There are skyscrapers and …” The thought trails off into the distance, out to sea perhaps. It’s here that we discuss how human figures rarely feature in his work. In fact, the only “people” he has shot are waxwork models of long-dead monarchs for his “Portraits” series. Asked whether he likes to shoot portraits of living people, his answer is blackly comic: “Please die first, be turned into wax, and then come back. Usually my exposure times are around 20 minutes and at a small aperture. Nobody can sit for that long.” Still, it’s hard not to feel Sugimoto is just not that interested in living people as prime subject matter. After all, alongside “Seascapes” his most interesting and well-known works are his architectural photos (geometrical and usually blurred) and his long-exposure pictures of the inside of cinemas, in “Theatres”. For that series, he set the exposure time to the exact length of the film, resulting in gorgeously rendered interiors with a single uniform white light where the picture on the screen should be. No people, no faces - just time and light. Add some water and you have the essence of life itself. “Apart from the sea, which is alive, everything I shoot is dead or man-made.” This apparent disinterest in people (in his art, not in his life) is markedly different from the two other great Japanese photogra
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IT’S NOT PHOTOGRAPHY
Most children heading to the beach tend to be preoccupied with sandcastles and ice cream, but Hiroshi Sugimoto was no ordinary child. On this particular day he was experiencing a mini existential crisis and also sowing the seeds for a future project that would make him a hugely respected, and bankable, photographer. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is pre-imagined in my noodle To trace Sugimoto’s path from a young boy growing up in post-war Japan to the artist we know today is to follow a photographer who is supremely dedicated to the classic medium of photography. For the “Seascapes” series (which he began in the early 1980s), Sugimoto used a large-format camera to capture the vast expanse of our oceans, shooting at night with long exposure times. It was a period of deep reflection. Staring at the horizon Sugimoto often imagined himself to be anywhere, at any time. “I consider photography as a machine that allows me to go back and forth through time,” he says. “As a medium though, it’s only been 170 years or so since its invention. For that long, many people believed what they saw was reality, but now with the introduction of digital photography, the form has become the same as painting. You can manipulate anything you want. That’s why I call digital photography a different medium. It’s not photography.” Sugimoto’s answer may seem curt, but he is anything but. Dressed impeccably in a light blue cotton shirt and dark blue blazer, he is soft-spoken and disarmingly polite. He’s in Hong Kong to give a talk at the Asia Society’s Arts and Museum Summit, and is enjoying his first hours back in the city he last visited more than half a century ago. “It was 1962. I was a 14-year-old high school kid,” he says, chuckling at the memory. “I remember Hong Kong well, but what’s this? It’s totally changed. It’s been destroyed. There are skyscrapers and …” The thought trails off into the distance, out to sea perhaps. It’s here that we discuss how human figures rarely feature in his work. In fact, the only “people” he has shot are waxwork models of long-dead monarchs for his “Portraits” series. Asked whether he likes to shoot portraits of living people, his answer is blackly comic: “Please die first, be turned into wax, and then come back. Usually my exposure times are around 20 minutes and at a small aperture. Nobody can sit for that long.” Still, it’s hard not to feel Sugimoto is just not that interested in living people as prime subject matter. After all, alongside “Seascapes” his most interesting and well-known works are his architectural photos (geometrical and usually blurred) and his long-exposure pictures of the inside of cinemas, in “Theatres”. For that series, he set the exposure time to the exact length of the film, resulting in gorgeously rendered interiors with a single uniform white light where the picture on the screen should be. No people, no faces - just time and light. Add some water and you have the essence of life itself. “Apart from the sea, which is alive, everything I shoot is dead or man-made.” This apparent disinterest in people (in his art, not in his life) is markedly differ-
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The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
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Dressed in a light blue cotton shirt and dark blue blazer, he is soft-spoken and disarmingly polite. He’s in Hong Kong to give a talk at the Asia Society’s Arts and Museum Summit, and is enjoying his first few hours back in the city he last visited more than half a century ago. “It was 1962. I was a 14-year-old high school kid,” he says, chuckling at the memory. “I remember Hong Kong well, but what’s this? It’s totally changed. It’s been destroyed. There are skyscrapers and …” The thought trails off into the distance, out to sea perhaps. It’s here that we discuss how human figures rarely feature in his work. In fact, the only “people” he has shot are waxwork models of long-dead monarchs for his “Portraits” series. Asked whether he likes to shoot portraits of living people, his answer is blackly comic: “Please die first, be turned into wax, and then come back. Usually my exposure times are around 20 minutes and at a small aperture. Nobody can sit for that long.” Still, it’s hard not to feel Sugimoto is just not that interested in living people as prime subject matter. After all, alongside “Seascapes” his most interesting and wellknown works are his architectural photos (geometrical and usually blurred) and his long-exposure pictures of the inside of cinemas, in “Theatres”. For that series, he set the exposure time to the exact length of the film, resulting in gorgeously rendered interiors with a single uniform white light where the
IT’S NOT PHOTOGRAPHY
Most children heading to the beach tend to be preoccupied with sandcastles and ice cream, but Hiroshi Sugimoto was no ordinary child. On this particular day he was experiencing a mini existential crisis and also sowing the seeds for a future project that would make him a hugely respected, and bankable, photographer. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is preimagined in my noodle To trace Sugimoto’s path from a young boy growing up in post-war Japan to the artist we know today is to follow a photographer who is supremely dedicated to the classic medium of photography. For the “Seascapes” series (which he began in the early 1980s), Sugimoto used a large-format camera to capture the vast expanse of our oceans, shooting at night with long exposure times. It was a period of deep reflection. Staring at the Sugimoto often imagined himself to be anywhere, at any time. “I consider photography as a machine that allows me to go back and forth through time,” he says. “As a medium though, it’s only been 170 years or so since its invention. For that long, many people believed what they saw was reality, but now with the introduction of digital photography, the form has become the same as painting. You can manipulate anything you want. That’s why I call digital photography a different medium. It’s not photography.” Sugimoto’s answer may seem curt, but he is anything but.
abstract abstract
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IT’S NOT PHOTOGRAPHY
Most children heading to the beach tend to be preoccupied with sandcastles and ice cream, but Hiroshi Sugimoto was no ordinary child. On this particular day he was experiencing a mini existential crisis and also sowing the seeds for a future project that would make him a hugely respected, and bankable, photographer. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is pre-imagined in my noodle To trace Sugimoto’s path from a young boy growing up in post-war Japan to the artist we know today is to follow a photographer who is supremely dedicated to the classic medium of photography. For the “Seascapes” series (which he began in the early 1980s), Sugimoto used a large-format camera to capture the vast expanse of our oceans, shooting at night with long exposure times. It was a period of deep reflection. Staring at the horizon Sugimoto often imagined himself to be anywhere, at any time. “I consider photography as a machine that allows me to go back and forth through time,” he says. “As a medium though, it’s only been 170 years or so since its invention. For that long, many people believed what they saw was reality, but now with the introduction of digital photography, the form has become the same as painting. You can manipulate anything you want. That’s why I call digital photography a different medium. It’s not photography.” Sugimoto’s answer may seem curt, but he is anything but. Dressed impeccably in a light blue cotton shirt and dark blue blazer, he is soft-spoken and disarmingly polite. He’s in Hong Kong to give a talk at the Asia Society’s Arts and Museum Summit, and is enjoying his first hours back in the city he last visited more than half a century ago. “It was 1962. I was a 14-year-old high school kid,” he says, chuckling at the memory. “I remember Hong Kong well, but what’s this? It’s totally changed. It’s been destroyed. There are skyscrapers and …” The thought trails off into the distance, out to sea perhaps. It’s here that we discuss how human figures rarely feature in his work. In fact, the only “people” he has shot are waxwork models of long-dead monarchs for his “Portraits” series. Asked whether he likes to shoot portraits of living people, his answer is blackly comic: “Please die first, be turned into wax, and then come back. Usually my exposure times are around 20 minutes and at a small aperture. Nobody can sit for that long.” Still, it’s hard not to feel Sugimoto is just not that interested in living people as prime subject matter. After all, alongside “Seascapes” his most interesting and well-known works are his architectural photos (geometrical and usually blurred) and his long-exposure pictures of the inside of cinemas, in “Theatres”. For that series, he set the exposure time to the exact length of the film, resulting in gorgeously rendered interiors with a single uniform white light where the picture on the screen should be. No people, no faces - just time and light. Add some water and you have the essence of life itself. “Apart from the sea, which is alive, everything I shoot is dead or man-made.” This apparent disinterest in people (in his art, not in his life) is markedly differ-
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Ancient Illusions
The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
IT’S NOT PHOTOGRAPHY
Most children heading to the beach tend to be preoccupied with sandcastles and ice cream, but Hiroshi Sugimoto was no ordinary child. On this particular day he was experiencing a mini existential crisis and also sowing the seeds for a future project that would make him a hugely respected, and bankable, photographer. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is pre-imagined in my noodle To trace Sugimoto’s path from a young boy growing up in postwar Japan to the artist we know today is to follow a photographer who is supremely dedicated to the classic medium of photography. For the “Seascapes” series (which he began in the early 1980s), Sugimoto used a large-format camera to capture the vast expanse of our oceans, shooting at night with long exposure times. It was a period of deep reflection. Staring at the Sugimoto often imagined himself to be anywhere, at any time. “I consider photography as a machine that allows me to go back and forth through time,” he says. “As a medium though, it’s only been 170 years or so since its invention. For that long, many people believed what they saw was reality, but now with the introduction of digital photography, the form has become the same as painting.
You can manipulate anything you want. That’s why I call digital photography a different medium. It’s not photography.” Sugimoto’s answer may seem curt, but he is anything but. Dressed in a light blue cotton shirt and dark blue blazer, he is soft-spoken and disarmingly polite. He’s in Hong Kong to give a talk at the Asia Society’s Arts and Museum Summit, and is enjoying his first few hours back in the city he last visited more than half a century ago. “It was 1962. I was a 14-year-old high school kid,” he says, chuckling at the memory. “I remember Hong Kong well, but what’s this? It’s totally changed. It’s been destroyed. There are skyscrapers and …” The thought trails off into the distance, out to sea perhaps. It’s here that we discuss how human figures rarely feature in his work. In fact, the only “people” he has shot are waxwork models of long-dead monarchs for his “Portraits” series. Asked whether he likes to shoot portraits of living people, his answer is blackly comic: “Please die first, be turned into wax, and then come back. Usually my exposure times are around 20 minutes and at a small aperture. Nobody can sit for that long.”
abstract abstract
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I consider photography as a machine that allows me to go back and forth through time
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abstract
rigorous technique. ‘The stuffed animals positioned before painted backdrops looked utterly fake,’ Sugimoto has said before of the Dioramas photographs. ‘Yet by taking a quick peek with one eye closed, all perspective vanished, and suddenly they looked very real. I’d found a way to see the world as a camera does. However fake the subject, once photographed, it’s as good as real.’ Sugimoto speaks both English and Japanese but is, unsurprisingly, most comfortable expressing himself visually. As he walks me through a list of what’s been packed off and what still remains here, he makes a point of showing me precisely what the value of each object is to him. He flips to an illustration of a woman’s rib cage in the French anatomy book. ‘This looks like a beautiful lady being opened while she is alive,’ he says, pointing to her face, which, it’s true, is expressive and aware despite the fact that her back is spliced open to reveal the bones and tissues. ‘On the contrary,’ Sugimoto says, ‘in British 18th-century anatomy books, the body’s expressions are completely dead. But this is almost like an angel – an angel being opened.’ A fossil is just like a photograph. ‘One side is negative, one side is positive. Same thing.’ Sugimoto is much more Zen about his practice of collecting than he is about his art. But obsession goes some way to explain his owning, for example, early editions of Isaac Newton’s Optics and the Principia Mathematics. ‘I can study them,’ Sugimoto explains to me patiently. ‘I just want to stay with them and I want to live with them. Some collectors want to buy [something] at auction and put it in storage and put it back to auction after a few years – as if it’s just investment. I’m interested in how the human eye captures images and reads the images and makes meaning out of them,’ he says. ‘So, in general, I just want to know what is going on in our world. And how a human being is aware of the outside of himself or herself. As a photographer, that’s what I was interested in in the first place: the perception of human existence. How do you read what is outside your body?’ Sugimoto is not concerned with making his own work appear timeless; he is more interested in capturing an idea of history – a precise sensation of weight that time can create – with an image. When I ask Sugimoto if he worries that the human lifespan is too short a time to do everything we might want to do, he is charmingly unfazed. ‘Well, living to 100 is nothing,’ he says. He raises his arm to the window: ‘The Empire State Building on Manhattan island – it probably won’t survive for more than 200 or 300 years. The age expectation of concrete is probably 100, 200 years old. It will deteriorate. Through my collection I get a sense of time, of the passage of time, the history, the meaning of history. I just want to feel it through the object.’
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Ancient Illusion The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
I consider photography as a machine that allows me to go back and forth through time
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Most children heading to the beach tend to be preoccupied with sandcastles and ice cream, but Hiroshi Sugimoto was no ordinary child. On this particular day he was experiencing a mini existential crisis and also sowing the seeds for a future project that would make him a hugely respected, and bankable, photographer. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is preimagined in my noodle To trace Sugimoto’s path from a young boy growing up in post-war Japan to the artist we know today is to follow a photographer who is supremely dedicated to the classic medium of photography. For the “Seascapes” series (which he began in the early 1980s), Sugimoto used a large-format camera to capture the vast expanse of our oceans, shooting at night with long exposure times. It was a period of deep reflection. Staring at the horizon Sugimoto often imagined himself to be anywhere, at any time. “I consider photography as a machine that allows me to go back and forth through time,” he says. “As a medium though, it’s only been 170 years or so since its invention. For that long, many people believed what they saw was reality, but now with the introduction of digital photography, the form has become the same as painting. You can manipulate anything you want. That’s why I call digital photography a different medium. It’s not photography.” Sugimoto’s answer may seem curt, but he is anything but. Dressed impeccably in a light blue cotton shirt and dark blue blazer, he is soft-spoken and disarmingly polite. He’s in Hong Kong to give a talk at the Asia Society’s Arts and Museum Summit, and is enjoying his first hours back in the city he last visited more than half a century ago. “It was 1962. I was a 14-year-old high school kid,” he says, chuckling at the memory. “I remember Hong Kong well, but what’s this? It’s totally changed. It’s been destroyed. There are skyscrapers and …” The thought trails off into the distance, out to sea perhaps. It’s here that we discuss how human figures rarely feature in his work. In fact, the only “people” he has shot are waxwork models of long-dead monarchs for his “Portraits” series. Asked whether he likes to shoot portraits of living people, his answer is blackly comic: “Please die first, be turned into wax, and then come back. Usually my exposure times are around 20 minutes and at a small aperture. Nobody can sit for that long.” Still, it’s hard not to feel Sugimoto is just not that interested in living people as prime subject matter. After all, alongside “Seascapes” his most interesting and well-known works are his architectural photos (geometrical and usually blurred) and his long-exposure pictures of the inside of cinemas, in “Theatres”. For that series, he set the exposure time to the exact length of the film, resulting in gorgeously rendered interiors with a single uniform white light where the picture on the screen should be. No people, no faces - just time and light. Add some water and you have the essence of life itself. “Apart from the sea, which is alive, everything I shoot is dead or man-made.” This apparent disinterest in people (in his art, not in his life) is markedly different from the two other great Japanese photogra
abstract
89
with his open acknowledgement of the scene’s artificiality, demonstrates both his playful curiosity and also his rigorous technique. ‘The stuffed animals positioned before painted backdrops looked utterly fake,’ Sugimoto has said before of the Dioramas photographs. ‘Yet by taking a quick peek with one eye closed, all perspective vanished, and suddenly they looked very real. I’d found a way to see the world as a camera does. However fake the subject, once photographed, it’s as good as real.’
Sugimoto speaks both English and Japanese but is, unsurprisingly, most comfortable expressing himself visually. As he walks me through a list of what’s been packed off and what still remains here, he makes a point of showing me precisely what the value of each object is to him. He flips to an illustration of a woman’s rib cage in the French anatomy book. ‘This looks like a beautiful lady being opened while she is alive,’ he says, pointing to her face, which, it’s true, is expressive and aware despite the fact that her back is spliced open to reveal the bones and tissues. ‘On the contrary,’ Sugimoto says, ‘in British 18th-century anatomy books, the body’s expressions are completely dead. But this is almost like an angel – an angel being opened.’ A fossil is just like a photograph. ‘One side is negative, one side is positive. Same thing.’ Sugimoto is much more Zen about his practice of collecting than he is about his art. But obsession
goes some way to explain his owning, for example, early editions of Isaac Newton’s Optics and the Principia Mathematics. ‘I can study them,’ Sugimoto explains to me patiently. ‘I just want to stay with them and I want to live with them. Some collectors want to buy [something] at auction and put it in storage and put it back to auction after a few years – as if it’s just investment. I’m interested in how the human eye captures images and reads the images and makes meaning out of them,’ he says. ‘So, in general, I just want to know what is going on in our world. And how a human being is aware of the outside of himself or herself. As a photographer, that’s what I was interested in in the first place: the perception of human existence. How do you read what is outside your body?’ Sugimoto is not concerned with making his own work appear timeless; he is more interested in capturing an idea of history – a precise sensation of weight that time can create – with an image. When I ask Sugimoto if he worries that the human lifespan is too short a time to do everything we might want to do, he is charmingly unfazed. ‘Well, living to 100 is nothing,’ he says. He raises his arm to the window: ‘The Empire State Building on Manhattan island – it probably won’t survive for more than 200 or 300 years. The age expectation of concrete is probably 100, 200 years old. It will deteriorate. Through my collection I get a sense of time, of the passage of time, the history, the meaning of history. I just want to feel it through the object.’
with his open acknowledgement of the scene’s artificiality, demonstrates both his playful curiosity and also his rigorous technique. ‘The stuffed animals positioned before painted backdrops looked utterly fake,’ Sugimoto has said before of the Dioramas photographs. ‘Yet by taking a quick peek with one eye closed, all perspective vanished, and suddenly they looked very real. I’d found a way to see the world as a camera does. However fake the subject, once photographed, it’s as good as real.’ Sugimoto speaks both English and Japanese but is, unsurprisingly, most comfortable expressing himself visually. As he walks me through a list of what’s been packed off and what still remains here, he makes a point of showing me precisely what the value of each object is to him. He flips to an illustration of a woman’s rib cage in the French anatomy book. ‘This looks like a beautiful lady being opened while she is alive,’ he says, pointing to her face, which, it’s true, is expressive and aware despite the fact that her back is spliced open to reveal the bones and tissues. ‘On the contrary,’ Sugimoto says, ‘in British 18th-century anatomy books, the body’s expressions are completely dead. But this is almost like an angel – an angel being opened.’ A fossil is just like a photograph. ‘One side is negative, one side is positive. Same thing.’ Sugimoto is much more Zen about his practice of collecting than he is about his art. But obsession goes some way to explain
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his owning, for example, early editions of Isaac Newton’s Optics and the Principia Mathematics. ‘I can study them,’ Sugimoto explains to me patiently. ‘I just want to stay with them and I want to live with them. Some collectors want to buy [something] at auction and put it in storage and put it back to auction after a few years – as if it’s just investment. I’m interested in how the human eye captures images and reads the images and makes meaning out of them,’ he says. ‘So, in general, I just want to know what is going on in our world. And how a human being is aware of the outside of himself or herself. As a photographer, that’s what I was interested in in the first place: the perception of human existence. How do you read what is outside your body?’ Sugimoto is not concerned with making his own work appear timeless; he is more interested in capturing an idea of history – a precise sensation of weight that time can create – with an image. When I ask Sugimoto if he worries that the human lifespan is too short a time to do everything we might want to do, he is charmingly unfazed. ‘Well, living to 100 is nothing,’ he says. He raises his arm to the window: ‘The Empire State Building on Manhattan island – it probably won’t survive for more than 200 or 300 years. The age expectation of concrete is probably 100, 200 years old. It will deteriorate. Through my collection I get a sense of time, of the passage of time, the history, the meaning of history. I just want to feel it through the object.’
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to be closer to exposé and documentary: wild, energetic, chaotic, and hyper sexual. It was Araki who said that photography was like penetration, a philosophy Sugimoto disagrees with. “I don’t like that style at all. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is pre-imagined in my noodle,” he says, tapping his head. “Reality can be made according to my own imagination. I don’t have to go out and search. There shouldn’t be surprises.” This patient approach to his work results in a striking serenity in the final image, which is reflected in his personal nature but at odds with his upbringing. “Quite the contrary,” he says, resolutely. “I was born in 1948, not long after the Japanese surrender. Tokyo had been heavily bombed, and my house was only temporary. There were 30 or 40 people sleeping in one room so it was very chaotic.” My first traceable memory is the seascape and the sharp line made by the horizon. I was about four years old
and my family and I were on a train heading to a resort for the summer. I thought how beautiful the scene was and then I realized: ‘I am here. I am conscious. But who am I?’ After that, my memory just fades away into the darkness.” Hiroshi Sugimoto is best known for his large-format photographs of dioramas, seascapes and buildings, but he is also a collector and was once an antiquities dealer. He talks to Apollo about the links between his collection and his art, and about capturing the passing of time. Sugimoto is a master of the long exposure and the large-format camera; the scenes are static and preserved, but in the true black and white tones of his gelatin silver prints, they are not entirely lifeless, either. Sugimoto’s ability to trick the eye – even in just an instant juxtaposed with his open acknowledgement of the scene’s artificiality, demonstrates both his playful curiosity and also his rigorous technique. ‘The stuffed animals positioned before painted backdrops looked utterly fake,’ Sugimoto has said before of the Dioramas photographs. ‘Yet by taking a quick
abstract
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peek with one eye closed, all perspective vanished, and suddenly they looked very real. I’d found a way to see the world as a camera does. However fake the subject, once photographed, it’s as good as real.’ Sugimoto speaks both English and Japanese but is, unsurprisingly, most comfortable expressing himself visually. As he walks me through a list of what’s been packed off and what still remains here, he makes a point of showing me precisely what the value of each object is to him. He flips to an illustration of a woman’s rib cage in the French anatomy book. ‘This looks like a beautiful lady being opened while she is alive,’ he says, pointing to her face, which, it’s true, is expressive and aware despite the fact that her back is spliced open to reveal the bones and tissues. ‘On the contrary,’ Sugimoto says, ‘in British 18th-century anatomy books, the body’s expressions are completely dead. But this is almost like an angel – an angel being opened.’ A fossil is just like a photograph. ‘One side is negative, one side is positive. Same thing.’ Sugimoto is much more Zen about his practice of collecting than he is about his art. But obsession goes some way to explain his owning, for example, early editions of Isaac Newton’s Optics and the Principia Mathematics. ‘I can study them,’ Sugimoto explains to me patiently. ‘I just want to stay
with them and I want to live with them. Some collectors want to buy [something] at auction and put it in storage and put it back to auction after a few years – as if it’s just investment. I’m interested in how the human eye captures images and reads the images and makes meaning out of them,’ he says. ‘So, in general, I just want to know what is going on in our world. And how a human being is aware of the outside of himself or herself. As a photographer, that’s what I was interested in in the first place: the perception of human existence. How do you read what is outside your body?’ Sugimoto is not concerned with making his own work appear timeless; he is more interested in capturing an idea of history – a precise sensation of weight that time can create – with an image. When I ask Sugimoto if he worries that the human lifespan is too short a time to do everything we might want to do, he is charmingly unfazed. ‘Well, living to 100 is nothing,’ he says. He raises his arm to the window: ‘The Empire State Building on Manhattan island – it probably won’t survive for more than 200 or 300 years. The age expectation of concrete is probably 100, 200 years old. It will deteriorate. Through my collection I get a sense of time, of the passage of time, the history, the meaning of history. I just want to feel it through the object.’
This [looks] alsmost like an angel
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Most children heading to the beach tend to be preoccupied with sandcastles and ice cream, but Hiroshi Sugimoto was no ordinary child. On this particular day he was experiencing a mini existential crisis and also sowing the seeds for a future project that would make him a hugely respected, and bankable, photographer. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is preimagined in my noodle To trace Sugimoto’s path from a young boy growing up in post-war Japan to the artist we know today is to follow a photographer who is supremely dedicated to the classic medium of photography. For the “Seascapes” series (which he began in the early 1980s), Sugimoto used a large-format camera to capture the vast expanse of our oceans, shooting at night with long exposure times. It was a period of deep reflection. Staring at the horizon Sugimoto often imagined himself to be anywhere, at any time. “I consider photography as a machine that allows me to go back and forth through time,” he says. “As a medium though, it’s only been 170 years or so since its invention. For that long, many people believed what they saw was reality, but now with the introduction of digital photography, the form has become the same as painting. You can manipulate anything you want. That’s why I call digital photography a different medium. It’s not photography.” Sugimoto’s answer may seem curt, but he is anything but. Dressed impeccably in a light blue cotton shirt and dark blue blazer, he is soft-spoken and disarmingly polite. He’s in Hong Kong to give a talk at the Asia Society’s Arts and Museum Summit, and is enjoying his first hours back in the city he last visited more than half a century ago. “It was 1962. I was a 14-year-old high school kid,” he says, chuckling at the memory. “I remember Hong Kong well, but what’s this? It’s totally changed. It’s been destroyed. There are skyscrapers and …” The thought trails off into the distance, out to sea perhaps. It’s here that we discuss how human figures rarely feature in his work. In fact, the only “people” he has shot are waxwork models of long-dead monarchs for his “Portraits” series. Asked whether he likes to shoot portraits of living people, his answer is blackly comic: “Please die first, be turned into wax, and then come back. Usually my exposure times are around 20 minutes and at a small aperture. Nobody can sit for that long.”
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Most children heading to the beach tend to be preoccupied with sandcastles and ice cream, but Hiroshi Sugimoto was no ordinary child. On this particular day he was experiencing a mini existential crisis and also sowing the seeds for a future project that would make him a hugely respected, and bankable, photographer. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is preimagined in my noodle To trace Sugimoto’s path from a young boy growing up in post-war Japan to the artist we know today is to follow a photographer who is supremely dedicated to the classic medium of photography. For the “Seascapes” series (which he began in the early 1980s), Sugimoto used a large-format camera to capture the vast expanse of our oceans, shooting at night with long exposure times. It was a period of deep reflection. Staring at the horizon Sugimoto often imagined himself to be anywhere, at any time. “I consider photography as a machine that allows me to go back and forth through time,” he says. “As a medium though, it’s only been 170 years or so since its invention. For that long, many people believed what they saw was reality, but now with the introduction of digital photography, the form has become the same as painting. You can manipulate anything you want. That’s why I call digital photography a different medium. It’s not photography.” Sugimoto’s answer may seem curt, but he is anything but. Dressed impeccably in a light blue cotton shirt and dark blue blazer, he is soft-spoken and disarmingly polite. He’s in Hong Kong to give a talk at the Asia Society’s Arts and Museum Summit, and is enjoying his first hours back in the city he last visited more than half a century ago. “It was 1962. I was a 14-year-old high school kid,” he says, chuckling at the memory. “I remember Hong Kong well, but what’s this? It’s totally changed. It’s been destroyed. There are skyscrapers and …” The thought trails off into the distance, out to sea perhaps. It’s here that we discuss how human figures rarely feature in his work. In fact, the only “people” he has shot are waxwork models of long-dead monarchs for his “Portraits” series. Asked whether he likes to shoot portraits of living people, his answer is blackly comic: “Please die first, be turned into wax, and then come back. Usually my exposure times are around 20 minutes and at a small aperture. Nobody can sit for that long.” Still, it’s hard not to feel Sugimoto is just not that interested in living
people as prime subject matter. After all, alongside “Seascap his most interesting and well-known works are his architect photos (geometrical and usually blurred) and his long-expo pictures of the inside of cinemas, in “Theatres”. For that series, he set the exposure time to the ex length of the film, resulting in gorgeously rendered interiors wi single uniform white light where the picture on the screen sho be. No people, no faces - just time and light. Add some w and you have the essence of life itself. “Apart from the sea, wh is alive, everything I shoot is dead or man-made.” This apparent disinterest in people (in his art, not in his life markedly different from the two other great Japanese photo phers of the second half of the 20th century. Daidô Moriya and Nobuyoshi Araki, both of whom were born a decade be Sugimoto, chose a different route, preferring to shoot every and anyone - from businessmen to down-and-outs - in styles tended to be closer to exposé and documentary: wild, energe chaotic, and hyper sexual. It was Araki who said that photo phy was like penetration, a philosophy Sugimoto disagrees w “I don’t like that style at all. I never hung around w my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In case everything is pre-imagined in my noodle,” he says, tapp his head. “Reality can be made according to my own imag tion. I don’t have to go out and search. There shouldn’t be sur es.” This patient approach to his work results in a striking sere in the final image, which is reflected in his personal nature bu odds with his upbringing. “Quite the contrary,” he says, resolu “I was born in 1948, not long after the Japanese surrender. To had been heavily bombed, and my house was only tempor There were 30 or 40 people sleeping in one room so it was v chaotic.” My first traceable memory is the seascape and the sh line made by the horizon. I was about four years old and family and I were on a train heading to a resort for the summ I thought how beautiful the scene was and then I realized: ‘I here. I am conscious. But who am I?’ After that, my memory fades away into the darkness.” Hiroshi Sugimoto is best known his large-format photographs of dioramas, seascapes and bu ings, but he is also a collector and was once an antiquities dea He talks to Apollo about the links between his collection and art, and about capturing the passing of time. Sugimoto is a master of the long exposure and large-format camera; the scenes are static and preserved, bu
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The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
88
abstract
Most children heading to the beach tend to be preoccupied with sandcastles and ice cream, but Hiroshi Sugimoto was no ordinary child. On this particular day he was experiencing a mini existential crisis and also sowing the seeds for a future project that would make him a hugely respected, and bankable, photographer. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is preimagined in my noodle To trace Sugimoto’s path from a young boy growing up in post-war Japan to the artist we know today is to follow a photographer who is supremely dedicated to the classic medium of photography. For the “Seascapes” series (which he began in the early 1980s), Sugimoto used a large-format camera to capture the vast expanse of our oceans, shooting at night with long exposure times. It was a period of deep reflection. Staring at the Sugimoto often imagined himself to be anywhere, at any time. “I consider photography as a machine that allows me to go back and forth through time,” he says. “As a medium though, it’s only been 170 years or so since its invention. For that long, many people believed what they saw was reality, but now with the introduction of digital photography, the form has become the same as painting. You can manipulate anything you want. That’s why I call digital photography a different medium. It’s not photography.” Sugimoto’s answer may seem curt, but he is anything but. Dressed in a light blue cotton shirt and dark blue blazer, he is soft-spoken and disarmingly polite. He’s in Hong Kong to give a talk at the Asia Society’s Arts and Museum Summit, and is enjoying his first few hours back in the city he last visited more than half a century ago. “It was 1962. I was a 14-year-old high school kid,” he says, chuckling at the memory. “I remember Hong Kong well, but what’s this? It’s totally changed. It’s been destroyed. There are skyscrapers and …” The thought trails off into the distance, out to sea perhaps. It’s here that we discuss how human figures rarely feature in his work. In fact, the only “people” he has shot are waxwork models of long-dead monarchs for his “Portraits” series. Asked whether he likes to shoot portraits of living people, his answer is blackly comic:
“Please die first, be turned into wax, and then come back. Usually my exposure times are around 20 minutes and at a small aperture. Nobody can sit for that long.” Still, it’s hard not to feel Sugimoto is just not that interested in living people as prime subject matter. After all, alongside “Seascapes” his most interesting and wellknown works are his architectural photos (geometrical and usually blurred) and his long-exposure pictures of the inside of cinemas, in “Theatres”. For that series, he set the exposure time to the exact length of the film, resulting in gorgeously rendered interiors with a single uniform white light where the picture on the screen should be. No people, no faces - just time and light. Add some water and you have the essence of life itself. “Apart from the sea, which is alive, everything I shoot is dead or man-made.” This apparent disinterest in people (in his art, not in his life) is markedly different from the two other great Japanese photographers of the second half of the 20th century. Daidô Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki, both of whom were born a decade before Sugimoto, chose a different route, preferring to shoot everyone and anyone from businessmen to down-and-outs - in styles that tended
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The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
88
abstract
Most children heading to the beach tend to be preoccupied with sandcastles and ice cream, but Hiroshi Sugimoto was no ordinary child. On this particular day he was experiencing a mini existential crisis and also sowing the seeds for a future project that would make him a hugely respected, and bankable, photographer. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is preimagined in my noodle To trace Sugimoto’s path from a young boy growing up in post-war Japan to the artist we know today is to follow a photographer who is supremely dedicated to the classic medium of photography. For the “Seascapes” series (which he began in the early 1980s), Sugimoto used a large-format camera to capture the vast expanse of our oceans, shooting at night with long exposure times. It was a period of deep reflection. Staring at the horizon Sugimoto often imagined himself to be anywhere, at any time. “I consider photography as a machine that allows me to go back and forth through time,” he says. “As a medium though, it’s only been 170 years or so since its invention. For that long, many people believed what they saw was reality, but now with the introduction of digital photography, the form has become the same as painting. You can manipulate anything you want. That’s why I call digital photography a different medium. It’s not photography.” Sugimoto’s answer may seem curt, but he is anything but. Dressed impeccably in a light blue cotton shirt and dark blue blazer, he is soft-spoken and disarmingly polite. He’s in Hong Kong to give a talk at the Asia Society’s Arts and Museum Summit, and is enjoying his first hours back in the city he last visited more than half a century ago. “It was 1962. I was a 14-year-old high school kid,” he says, chuckling at the memory. “I remember Hong Kong well, but what’s this? It’s totally changed. It’s been destroyed. There are skyscrapers and …” The thought trails off into the distance, out to sea perhaps. It’s here that we discuss how human figures rarely feature in his work. In fact, the only “people” he has shot are waxwork models of long-dead monarchs for his “Portraits” series. Asked whether he likes to shoot portraits of living people, his answer is blackly comic: “Please die first, be turned into wax, and then come back. Usually my exposure times are around 20 minutes and at a small aperture. Nobody can sit for that long.” Still, it’s hard not to feel Sugimoto is just not that interested in living
“It was 1962. I was a 14-year-old high school kid,” he says, chuckling at the memory. “I remember Hong Kong well, but what’s this? It’s totally changed. It’s been destroyed. There are skyscrapers and …” The thought trails off into the distance, out to sea perhaps. It’s here that we discuss how human figures rarely feature in his work. In fact, the only “people” he has shot are waxwork models of long-dead monarchs for his “Portraits” series. Asked whether he likes to shoot portraits of living people, his answer is blackly comic: “Please die first, be turned into wax, and then come back. Usually my exposure times are around 20 minutes and at a small aperture. Nobody can sit for that long.” Still, it’s hard not to feel Sugimoto is just not that interested in living people as prime subject matter. After all, alongside “Seascapes” his most interesting and well-known works are his architectural photos (geometrical and usually blurred) and his long-exposure pictures of the inside of cinemas, in “Theatres”. For that series, he set the exposure time to the exact length of the film, resulting in gorgeously rendered interiors with a single uniform white light where the picture on the screen should be. No people, no faces - just time and light. Add some water and you have the essence of life itself. “Apart from the sea, which is alive, everything I shoot is dead or man-made.” This apparent disinterest in people (in his art, not in his life) is markedly different from the two other great Japanese photographers of the second half of the 20th century. Daidô Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki, both of whom were born a decade before Sugimoto, chose a different route, preferring to shoot everyone and anyone - from businessmen to down-and-outs - in styles that
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The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
Most children heading to the beach tend to be preoccupied with sandcastles and ice cream, but Hiroshi Sugimoto was no ordinary child. On this particular day he was experiencing a mini existential crisis and also sowing the seeds for a future project that would make him a hugely respected, and bankable, photographer. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is preimagined in my noodle To trace Sugimoto’s path from a young boy growing up in post-war Japan to the artist we know today is to follow a photographer who is supremely dedicated to the classic medium of photography. For the “Seascapes” series (which he began in the early 1980s), Sugimoto used a large-format camera to capture the vast expanse of our oceans, shooting at night with long exposure times. It was a period of deep reflection. Staring at the Sugimoto often imagined himself to be anywhere, at any time. “I consider photography as a machine that allows me to go back and forth through time,” he says. “As a medium though, it’s only been 170 years or so since its invention. For that long, many people believed what they saw was reality, but now with the introduction of digital photography, the form has become the same as painting. You can manipulate anything you want. That’s why I call digital photography a different medium. It’s not photography.” Sugimoto’s answer may seem curt, but he is anything but. 88
abstract
Dressed in a light blue cotton shirt and dark blue blazer, he is soft-spoken and disarmingly polite. He’s in Hong Kong to give a talk at the Asia Society’s Arts and Museum Summit, and is enjoying his first few hours back in the city he last visited more than half a century ago. “It was 1962. I was a 14-year-old high school kid,” he says, chuckling at the memory. “I remember Hong Kong well, but what’s this? It’s totally changed. It’s been destroyed. There are skyscrapers and …” The thought trails off into the distance, out to sea perhaps. It’s here that we discuss how human figures rarely feature in his work. In fact, the only “people” he has shot are waxwork models of long-dead monarchs for his “Portraits” series. Asked whether he likes to shoot portraits of living people, his answer is blackly comic: “Please die first, be turned into wax, and then come back. Usually my exposure times are around 20 minutes and at a small aperture. Nobody can sit for that long.” Still, it’s hard not to feel Sugimoto is just not that interested in living people as prime subject matter. After all, alongside “Seascapes” his most interesting and wellknown works are his architectural photos (geometrical and usually blurred) and his long-exposure pictures of the inside of cinemas, in “Theatres”. For that series, he set the exposure time to the exact length of the film, resulting in gorgeously rendered interiors with a single uniform white light where the
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picture on the screen should be. No people, no faces - just time and light. Add some water and you have the essence of life itself. “Apart from the sea, which is alive, everything I shoot is dead or man-made.” This apparent disinterest in people (in his art, not in his life) is markedly different from the two other great Japanese photographers of the second half of the 20th century. Daidô Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki, both of whom were born a decade before Sugimoto, chose a different route, preferring to shoot everyone and anyone from businessmen to down-and-outs - in styles that tended to be closer to exposé and documentary: wild, energetic, chaotic, and hyper sexual. It was Araki who said that photography was like penetration, a philosophy Sugimoto disagrees with. “I don’t like that style at all. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is pre-imagined in my noodle,” he says, tapping his head. “Reality can be made according to my own imagination. I don’t have to go out and search. There shouldn’t be surprises.” This patient approach to his work results in a striking serenity in the final image, which is reflected in his personal nature but at odds with his upbringing. “Quite the contrary,” he says, resolutely. “I was born in 1948, not long after the Japanese surrender. Tokyo had been heavily bombed, and my house was only temporary. There were 30 or 40 people sleeping in one room so it was very chaotic.” My first traceable memory is the seascape and the sharp line made by the horizon. I was about four years old and my family and I were on a train heading to a resort for the summer. I thought how beautiful the scene was and then I realized: ‘I am here. I am conscious. But who am I?’ After that, my memory just fades away into the darkness.” Hiroshi Sugimoto is best known for his large-format photographs of dioramas, seascapes and buildings, but he is also a collector and was once an antiquities dealer. He talks to Apollo about the links between his collection and his art, and about capturing the passing of time. Sugimoto is a master of the long exposure and the large-format camera; the scenes are static and preserved, but in the true black and white tones of his gelatin silver prints, they are not entirely lifeless, either. Sugimoto’s ability to trick the eye – even in just an instant juxtaposed with his open acknowledgement of the scene’s artificiality, demonstrates both his playful curiosity and also his
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Fossils are just like photographs
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The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
Most children heading to the beach tend to be preoccupied with sandcastles and ice cream, but Hiroshi Sugimoto was no ordinary child. On this particular day he was experiencing a mini existential crisis and also sowing the seeds for a future project that would make him a hugely respected, and bankable, photographer. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is preimagined in my noodle To trace Sugimoto’s path from a young boy growing up in post-war Japan to the artist we know today is to follow a photographer who is supremely dedicated to the classic medium of photography. For the “Seascapes” series (which he began in the early 1980s), Sugimoto used a large-format camera to capture the vast expanse of our oceans, shooting at night with long exposure times. It was a period of deep reflection. Staring at the horizon Sugimoto often imagined himself to be anywhere, at any time. “I consider photography as a machine that allows me to go back and forth through time,” he says. “As a medium though, it’s only been 170 years or so since its invention. For that long, many people believed what they saw was reality, but now with the introduction of digital photography, the form has become the
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same as painting. You can manipulate anything you want. That’s why I call digital photography a different medium. It’s not photography.” Sugimoto’s answer may seem curt, but he is anything but. Dressed impeccably in a light blue cotton shirt and dark blue blazer, he is soft-spoken and disarmingly polite. He’s in Hong Kong to give a talk at the Asia Society’s Arts and Museum Summit, and is enjoying his first hours back in the city he last visited more than half a century ago. “It was 1962. I was a 14-year-old high school kid,” he says, chuckling at the memory. “I remember Hong Kong well, but what’s this? It’s totally changed. It’s been destroyed. There are skyscrapers and …” The thought trails off into the distance, out to sea perhaps. It’s here that we discuss how human figures rarely feature in his work. In fact, the only “people” he has shot are waxwork models of long-dead monarchs for his “Portraits” series. Asked whether he likes to shoot portraits of living people, his answer is blackly comic: “Please die first, be turned into wax, and then come back. Usually my exposure times are around 20 minutes and at a small aperture. Nobody can sit for that long.” Still, it’s hard not to feel Sugimoto is just not that interested in living people as prime subject matter. After all, alongside “Seascapes” his
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Ancient Illusion The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
Most children heading to the beach tend to be preoccupied with sandcastles and ice cream, but Hiroshi Sugimoto was no ordinary child. On this particular day he was experiencing a mini existential crisis and also sowing the seeds for a future project that would make him a hugely respected, and bankable, photographer. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is preimagined in my noodle To trace Sugimoto’s path from a young boy growing up in post-war Japan to the artist we know today is to follow a photographer who is supremely dedicated to the classic medium of photography. For the “Seascapes” series (which he began in the early 1980s), Sugimoto used a large-format camera to capture the vast expanse of our oceans, shooting at night with long exposure times. It was a period of deep reflection. Staring at the horizon Sugimoto often imagined himself to be anywhere, at any time. “I consider photography as a machine that allows me to go back and forth through time,” he says. “As a medium though, it’s only been 170 years or so since its invention. For that long, many people believed what they saw was reality, but now with the introduction of digital photography, the form has become the same as painting. You can manipulate anything you want. That’s why I call digital photography a different medium. It’s not photography.” Sugimoto’s answer may seem curt, but he is anything but. Dressed impeccably in a light blue cotton shirt and dark blue blazer, he is soft-spoken and disarmingly polite. He’s in Hong Kong to give a talk at the Asia Society’s Arts and Museum Summit, and is enjoying his first hours back in the city he last visited more than half a century ago. “It was 1962. I was a 14-year-old high school kid,” he says, chuckling at the memory. “I remember Hong Kong well, but what’s this? It’s totally changed. It’s been destroyed. There are skyscrapers and …” The thought trails off into the distance, out to sea perhaps. It’s here that we discuss how human figures rarely feature in his work. In fact, the only “people” he has shot are waxwork models of long-dead monarchs for his “Portraits” series. Asked whether he likes to shoot portraits of living people, his answer is blackly comic: “Please die first, be turned into wax, and then come back. Usually my exposure times are around 20 minutes and at a small aperture. Nobody can sit for that long.” Still, it’s hard not to feel Sugimoto is just not that interested in living people as prime subject matter. After all, alongside “Seascapes” his most interesting and well-known works are his architectural photos (geometrical and usually blurred) and his long-exposure pictures of the inside of cinemas, in “Theatres”. For that series, he set the exposure time to the exact length of the film, resulting in gorgeously rendered interiors with a single uniform white light where the picture on the screen should be. No people, no faces - just time and light. Add some water and you have the essence of life itself. “Apart from the sea, which is alive, everything I shoot is dead or man-made.”
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Fossils are just like photographs
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The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
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Most children heading to the beach tend to be preoccupied with sandcastles and ice cream, but Hiroshi Sugimoto was no ordinary child. On this particular day he was experiencing a mini existential crisis and also sowing the seeds for a future project that would make him a hugely respected, and bankable, photographer. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is preimagined in my noodle To trace Sugimoto’s path from a young boy growing up in post-war Japan to the artist we know today is to follow a photographer who is supremely dedicated to the classic medium of photography. For the “Seascapes” series (which he began in the early 1980s), Sugimoto used a large-format camera to capture the vast expanse of our oceans, shooting at night with long exposure times. It was a period of deep reflection. Staring at the horizon Sugimoto often imagined himself to be anywhere, at any time. “I consider photography as a machine that allows me to go back and forth through time,” he says. “As a medium though, it’s only been 170 years or so since its invention. For that long, many people believed what they saw was reality, but now with the introduction of digital photography, the form has become the same as painting. You can manipulate anything you want. That’s why I call digital photography a different medium. It’s not photography.” Sugimoto’s answer may seem curt, but he is anything but. Dressed impeccably in a light blue cotton shirt and dark blue blazer, he is soft-spoken and disarmingly polite. He’s in Hong Kong to give a talk at the Asia Society’s Arts and Museum Summit, and is enjoying his first hours back in the city he last visited more than half a century ago. “It was 1962. I was a 14-year-old high school kid,” he says, chuckling at the memory. “I remember Hong Kong well, but what’s this? It’s totally changed. It’s been destroyed. There are skyscrapers and …” The thought trails off into the distance, out to sea perhaps. It’s here that we discuss how human figures rarely feature in his work. In fact, the only “people” he has shot are waxwork models of long-dead monarchs for his “Portraits” series. Asked whether he likes to shoot portraits of living people, his answer is blackly comic: “Please die first, be turned into wax, and then come back. Usually my exposure times are around 20 minutes and at a small aperture. Nobody can sit for that long.” Still, it’s hard not to feel Sugimoto is just not that interested in living
people as prime subject matter. After all, alongside “Seascapes” his most interesting and well-known works are his architectural photos (geometrical and usually blurred) and his long-exposure pictures of the inside of cinemas, in “Theatres”. For that series, he set the exposure time to the exact length of the film, resulting in gorgeously rendered interiors with a single uniform white light where the picture on the screen should be. No people, no faces - just time and light. Add some water and you have the essence of life itself. “Apart from the sea, which is alive, everything I shoot is dead or man-made.” This apparent disinterest in people (in his art, not in his life) is markedly different from the two other great Japanese photographers of the second half of the 20th century. Daidô Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki, both of whom were born a decade before Sugimoto, chose a different route, preferring to shoot everyone and anyone - from businessmen to down-and-outs - in styles that tended to be closer to exposé and documentary: wild, energetic, chaotic, and hyper sexual. It was Araki who said that photography was like penetration, a philosophy Sugimoto disagrees with. “I don’t like that style at all. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is pre-imagined in my noodle,” he says, tapping his head. “Reality can be made according to my own imagination. I don’t have to go out and search. There shouldn’t be surprises.” This patient approach to his work results in a striking serenity in the final image, which is reflected in his personal nature but at odds with his upbringing. “Quite the contrary,” he says, resolutely. “I was born in 1948, not long after the Japanese surrender. Tokyo had been heavily bombed, and my house was only temporary. There were 30 or 40 people sleeping in one room so it was very chaotic.” My first traceable memory is the seascape and the sharp line made by the horizon. I was about four years old and my family and I were on a train heading to a resort for the summer. I thought how beautiful the scene was and then I realized: ‘I am here. I am conscious. But who am I?’ After that, my memory just fades away into the darkness.” Hiroshi Sugimoto is best known for his large-format photographs of dioramas, seascapes and buildings, but he is also a collector and was once an antiquities dealer. He talks to Apollo about the links between his collection and his art, and about capturing the passing of time. Sugimoto is a master of the long exposure and the large-format camera; the scenes are static and preserved, but in
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Ancient Illusion The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
Most children heading to the beach tend to be preoccupied with sandcastles and ice cream, but Hiroshi Sugimoto was no ordinary child. On this particular day he was experiencing a mini existential crisis and also sowing the seeds for a future project that would make him a hugely respected, and bankable, photographer. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is pre-imagined in my noodle To trace Sugimoto’s path from a young boy growing up in post-war Japan to the artist we know today is to follow a photographer who is supremely dedicated to the classic medium of photography. For the “Seascapes” series (which he began in the early 1980s), Sugimoto used a large-format camera to capture the vast expanse of our oceans, shooting at night with long exposure times. It was a period of deep reflection. Staring at the horizon Sugimoto often imagined himself to be anywhere, at any time. “I consider photography as a machine that allows me to go back and forth through time,” he says. “As a medium though, it’s only been 170 years or so since its invention. For that long, many people believed what they saw was reality, but now with the introduction of digital photography, the form has become the same as painting. You can manipulate anything you want. That’s why I call digital photography a different medium. It’s not photography.” Sugimoto’s answer may seem curt, but he is anything but. Dressed impeccably in a light blue cotton shirt and dark blue blazer, he is soft-spoken and disarmingly polite. He’s in Hong Kong to give a talk at the Asia Society’s Arts and Museum Summit, and is enjoying his first hours back in the city he last visited more than half a century ago. “It was 1962. I was a 14-year-old high school kid,” he says, chuckling at the memory. “I remember Hong Kong well, but what’s this? It’s totally changed. It’s been destroyed. There are skyscrapers and …” The thought trails off into the distance, out to sea perhaps. It’s here that we discuss how human figures rarely feature in his work. In fact, the only “people” he has shot are waxwork models of long-dead monarchs for his “Portraits” series. Asked whether he likes to shoot portraits of living people, his answer is blackly comic: “Please die first, be turned into wax, and then come back. Usually my exposure times are around 20 minutes and at a small aperture. Nobody can sit for that long.” Still, it’s hard not to feel Sugimoto is just not that interested in living people as prime subject matter. After all, alongside “Seascapes” his most interesting and well-known works are his architectural photos (geometrical and usually blurred) and his long-exposure pictures of the inside of cinemas, in “Theatres”. For that series, he set the exposure time to the exact length of the film, resulting in gorgeously rendered interiors with a single uniform white light where the picture on the screen should be. No people, no faces - just time and light. Add some water and you have the essence of life itself. “Apart from the sea, which is alive, everything I shoot is dead or man-made.” This apparent disinterest in people (in his art, not in his life) is markedly different from the two other great Japanese photogra
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Fossils are just like photography
Most children heading to the beach tend to be preoccupied with sandcastles and ice cream, but Hiroshi Sugimoto was no ordinary child. On this particular day he was experiencing a mini existential crisis and also sowing the seeds for a future project that would make him a hugely respected, and bankable, photographer. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is preimagined in my noodle To trace Sugimoto’s path from a young boy growing up in post-war Japan to the artist we know today is to follow a photographer who is supremely dedicated to the classic medium of photography. For the “Seascapes” series (which he began in the early 1980s), Sugimoto used a large-format camera to capture the vast expanse of our oceans, shooting at night with long exposure times. It was a period of deep reflection. Staring at the horizon Sugimoto often imagined himself to be anywhere, at any time. “I consider photography as a machine that allows me to go back and forth through time,” he says. “As a medium though, it’s only been 170 years or so since its invention. For that long, many people believed what they saw was reality, but now with the introduction of digital photography, the form has become the
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same as painting. You can manipulate anything you want. That’s why I call digital photography a different medium. It’s not photography.” Sugimoto’s answer may seem curt, but he is anything but. Dressed impeccably in a light blue cotton shirt and dark blue blazer, he is soft-spoken and disarmingly polite. He’s in Hong Kong to give a talk at the Asia Society’s Arts and Museum Summit, and is enjoying his first hours back in the city he last visited more than half a century ago. “It was 1962. I was a 14-year-old high school kid,” he says, chuckling at the memory. “I remember Hong Kong well, but what’s this? It’s totally changed. It’s been destroyed. There are skyscrapers and …” The thought trails off into the distance, out to sea perhaps. It’s here that we discuss how human figures rarely feature in his work. In fact, the only “people” he has shot are waxwork models of long-dead monarchs for his “Portraits” series. Asked whether he likes to shoot portraits of living people, his answer is blackly comic: “Please die first, be turned into wax, and then come back. Usually my exposure times are around 20 minutes and at a small aperture. Nobody can sit for that long.” Still, it’s hard not to feel Sugimoto is just not that interested in living people as prime subject matter. After all, alongside “Seascapes” his
abstract
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The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
88
abstract
Most children heading to the beach tend to be preoccupied with sandcastles and ice cream, but Hiroshi Sugimoto was no ordinary child. On this particular day he was experiencing a mini existential crisis and also sowing the seeds for a future project that would make him a hugely respected, and bankable, photographer. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is preimagined in my noodle To trace Sugimoto’s path from a young boy growing up in post-war Japan to the artist we know today is to follow a photographer who is supremely dedicated to the classic medium of photography. For the “Seascapes” series (which he began in the early 1980s), Sugimoto used a large-format camera to capture the vast expanse of our oceans, shooting at night with long exposure times. It was a period of deep reflection. Staring at the horizon Sugimoto often imagined himself to be anywhere, at any time. “I consider photography as a machine that allows me to go back and forth through time,” he says. “As a medium though, it’s only been 170 years or so since its invention. For that long, many people believed what they saw was reality, but now with the introduction of digital photography, the form has become the same as painting. You can manipulate anything you want. That’s why I call digital photography a different medium. It’s not photography.” Sugimoto’s answer may seem curt, but he is anything but. Dressed impeccably in a light blue cotton shirt and dark blue blazer, he is soft-spoken and disarmingly polite. He’s in Hong Kong to give a talk at the Asia Society’s Arts and Museum Summit, and is enjoying his first hours back in the city he last visited more than half a century ago. “It was 1962. I was a 14-year-old high school kid,” he says, chuckling at the memory. “I remember Hong Kong well, but what’s this? It’s totally changed. It’s been destroyed. There are
people as prime subject matter. After all, alongside “Seascapes” his most interesting and well-known works are his architectural photos (geometrical and usually blurred) and his long-exposure pictures of the inside of cinemas, in “Theatres”. For that series, he set the exposure time to the exact length of the film, resulting in gorgeously rendered interiors with a single uniform white light where the picture on the screen should be. No people, no faces - just time and light. Add some water and you have the essence of life itself. “Apart from the sea, which is alive, everything I shoot is dead or man-made.” This apparent disinterest in people (in his art, not in his life) is markedly different from the two other great Japanese photographers of the second half of the 20th century. Daidô Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki, both of whom were born a decade before Sugimoto, chose a different route, preferring to shoot everyone and anyone - from businessmen to down-and-outs - in styles that tended to be closer to exposé and documentary: wild, energetic, chaotic, and hyper sexual. It was Araki who said that photography was like penetration, a philosophy Sugimoto disagrees with. “I don’t like that style at all. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is pre-imagined in my noodle,” he says, tapping his head. “Reality can be made according to my own imagination. I don’t have to go out and search. There shouldn’t be surprises.” This patient approach to his work results in a striking serenity in the final image, which is reflected in his personal nature but at odds with his upbringing. “Quite the contrary,” he says, resolutely. “I was born in 1948, not long after the Japanese surrender. Tokyo had been heavily bombed, and my house was only temporary. There were 30 or 40 people sleeping in one room so it was very chaotic.” My first traceable memory is the seascape and the sharp line made by the horizon. I was about four years old and my abstract
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The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
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IT’S NOT PHOTOGRAPHY Most children heading to the beach tend to be preoccupied with sandcastles and ice cream, but Hiroshi Sugimoto was no ordinary child. On this particular day he was experiencing a mini existential crisis and also sowing the seeds for a future project that would make him a hugely respected, and bankable, photographer. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is preimagined in my noodle To trace Sugimoto’s path from a young boy growing up in post-war Japan to the artist we know today is to follow a photographer who is supremely dedicated to the classic medium of photography. For the “Seascapes” series (which he began in the early 1980s), Sugimoto used a large-format camera to capture the vast expanse of our oceans, shooting at night with long exposure times. It was a period of deep reflection. Staring at the horizon Sugimoto often imagined himself to be anywhere, at any time. “I consider photography as a machine that allows me to go back and forth through time,” he says. “As a medium though, it’s only been 170 years or so since its invention. For that long, many people believed what they saw was reality, but now with the introduction of digital photography, the form has become the same as painting. You can manipulate anything you want. That’s why I call digital photography a different medium. It’s not photography.” Sugimoto’s answer may seem curt, but he is anything but. Dressed impeccably in a light blue cotton shirt and dark blue blazer, he is soft-spoken and disarmingly polite. He’s in Hong Kong to give a talk at the Asia Society’s Arts and Museum Summit, and is enjoying his first hours back in the city he last visited more
abstract
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The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
Most children heading to the beach tend to be preoccupied with sandcastles and ice cream, but Hiroshi Sugimoto was no ordinary child. On this particular day he was experiencing a mini existential crisis and also sowing the seeds for a future project that would make him a hugely respected, and bankable, photographer. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is preimagined in my noodle To trace Sugimoto’s path from a young boy growing up in post-war Japan to the artist we know today is to follow a photographer who is supremely dedicated to the classic medium of photography. For the “Seascapes” series (which he began in the early 1980s), Sugimoto used a large-format camera to capture the vast expanse of our oceans, shooting at night with long exposure times. It was a period of deep reflection. Staring at the horizon Sugimoto often imagined himself to be anywhere, at any time. “I consider photography as a machine that allows me to go back and forth through time,” he says. “As a medium though, it’s only been 170 years or so since its invention. For that long, many people believed what they saw was reality, but now with the introduction of digital photography, the form has become the same as painting. You can manipulate anything you want. That’s why I call digital photography a different medium. It’s not photography.” Sugimoto’s answer may seem curt, but he is anything but. Dressed impeccably in a light blue cotton shirt and dark blue blazer, he is soft-spoken and disarmingly polite. He’s in Hong Kong to give a talk at the Asia Society’s Arts and Museum Summit, and is enjoying his first hours back in the city he last visited more than half a century ago. “It was 1962. I was a 14-year-old high school kid,” he says, chuckling at the memory. “I remember Hong Kong well, but what’s this? It’s totally changed. It’s been destroyed. There are
Fossils are just like photography
people as prime subject matter. After all, alongside “Seascapes” his most interesting and well-known works are his architectural photos (geometrical and usually blurred) and his long-exposure pictures of the inside of cinemas, in “Theatres”. For that series, he set the exposure time to the exact length of the film, resulting in gorgeously rendered interiors with a single uniform white light where the picture on the screen should be. No people, no faces - just time and light. Add some water and you have the essence of life itself. “Apart from the sea, which is alive, everything I shoot is dead or man-made.” This apparent disinterest in people (in his art, not in his life) is markedly different from the two other great Japanese photographers of the second half of the 20th century. Daidô Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki, both of whom were born a decade before Sugimoto, chose a different route, preferring to shoot everyone and anyone - from businessmen to down-and-outs - in styles that tended to be closer to exposé and documentary: wild, energetic, chaotic, and hyper sexual. It was Araki who said that photography was like penetration, a philosophy Sugimoto disagrees with. “I don’t like that style at all. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is pre-imagined in my noodle,” he says, tapping his head. “Reality can be made according to my own imagination. I don’t have to go out and search. There shouldn’t be surprises.” This patient approach to his work results in a striking serenity in the final image, which is reflected in his personal nature but at odds with his upbringing. “Quite the contrary,” he says, resolutely. “I was born in 1948, not long after the Japanese surrender. Tokyo had been heavily bombed, and my house was only temporary. There were 30 or 40 people sleeping in one room so it was very chaotic.” My first traceable memory is the seascape and the sharp line made by the horizon. I was about four years old and my
abstract
89
Ancient Illusion The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
Most children heading to the beach tend to be preoccupied with sandcastles and ice cream, but Hiroshi Sugimoto was no ordinary child. On this particular day he was experiencing a mini existential crisis and also sowing the seeds for a future project that would make him a hugely respected, and bankable, photographer. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is pre-imagined in my noodle To trace Sugimoto’s path from a young boy growing up in post-war Japan to the artist we know today is to follow a photographer who is supremely dedicated to the classic medium of photography. For the “Seascapes” series (which he began in the early 1980s), Sugimoto used a large-format camera to capture the vast expanse of our oceans, shooting at night with long exposure times. It was a period of deep reflection. Staring at the horizon Sugimoto often imagined himself to be anywhere, at any time. “I consider photography as a machine that allows me to go back and forth through time,” he says. “As a medium though, it’s only been 170 years or so since its invention. For that long, many people believed what they saw was reality, but now with the introduction of digital photography, the form has become the same as painting. You can manipulate anything you want. That’s why I call digital photography a different medium. It’s not photography.” Sugimoto’s answer may seem curt, but he is anything but. Dressed impeccably in a light blue cotton shirt and dark blue blazer, he is soft-spoken and disarmingly polite. He’s in Hong Kong to give a talk at the Asia Society’s Arts and Museum Summit, and is enjoying his first hours back in the city he last visited more than half a century ago. “It was 1962. I was a 14-year-old high school kid,” he says, chuckling at the memory. “I remember Hong Kong well, but what’s this? It’s totally changed. It’s been destroyed. There are skyscrapers and …” The thought trails off into the distance, out to sea perhaps. It’s here that we discuss how human figures rarely feature in his work. In fact, the only “people” he has shot are waxwork models of long-dead monarchs for his “Portraits” series. Asked whether he likes to shoot portraits
people as prime subject matter. After all, alongside “Seascapes” his most interesting and well-known works are his architectural photos (geometrical and usually blurred) and his long-exposure pictures of the inside of cinemas, in “Theatres”. For that series, he set the exposure time to the exact length of the film, resulting in gorgeously rendered interiors with a single uniform white light where the picture on the screen should be. No people, no faces - just time and light. Add some water and you have the essence of life itself. “Apart from the sea, which is alive, everything I shoot is dead or man-made.” This apparent disinterest in people (in his art, not in his life) is markedly different from the two other great Japanese photographers of the second half of the 20th century. Daidô Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki, both of whom were born a decade before Sugimoto, chose a different route, preferring to shoot everyone and anyone - from businessmen to down-and-outs - in styles that tended to be closer to exposé and documentary: wild, energetic, chaotic, and hyper sexual. It was Araki who said that photography was like penetration, a philosophy Sugimoto disagrees with. “I don’t like that style at all. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is pre-imagined in my noodle,” he says, tapping his head. “Reality can be made according to my own imagination. I don’t have to go out and search. There shouldn’t be surprises.” This patient approach to his work results in a striking serenity in the final image, which is reflected in his personal nature but at odds with his upbringing. “Quite the contrary,” he says, resolutely. “I was born in 1948, not long after the Japanese surrender. Tokyo had been heavily bombed, and my house was only temporary. There were 30 or 40 people sleeping in one room so it was very chaotic.” My first traceable memory is the seascape and the sharp line made by the horizon. I was about four years old and my family and I were on a train heading to a resort for the summer. I thought how beautiful the scene was and then I realized: ‘I am here. I am conscious. But who am I?’ After that, my memory just fades away into the darkness.” Hiroshi Sugimoto is best known for his large-format abstract
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The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
The perception of human existence. How do you read what is outside your body 88
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ed with sandcastles and ice cream, but Hiroshi Sugimoto was no ordinary child. On this particular day he was experiencing a mini existential crisis and also sowing the seeds for a future project that would make him a hugely respected, and bankable, photographer. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is preimagined in my noodle To trace Sugimoto’s path from a young boy growing up in post-war Japan to the artist we know today is to follow a photographer who is supremely dedicated to the classic medium of photography. For the “Seascapes” series (which he began in the early 1980s), Sugimoto used a large-format camera to capture the vast expanse of our oceans, shooting at night with long exposure times. It was a period of deep reflection. Staring at the horizon Sugimoto often imagined himself to be anywhere, at any time. “I consider photography as a machine that allows me to go back and forth through time,” he says. “As a medium though, it’s only been 170 years or so since its invention. For that long, many people believed what they saw was reality, but now with the introduction of digital photography, the form has become the same as painting. You can manipulate anything you want. That’s why I call digital photography a different medium. It’s not photography.” Sugimoto’s answer may seem curt, but he is anything but. Dressed impeccably in a light blue cotton shirt and dark blue blazer, he is soft-spoken and disarmingly polite. He’s in Hong Kong to give a talk at the Asia Society’s Arts and Museum Summit, and is enjoying his first hours back in the city he last visited more than half a century ago.
“It was 1962. I was a 14-year-old high school kid,” he says, chuckling at the memory. “I remember Hong Kong well, but what’s this? It’s totally changed. It’s been destroyed. There are skyscrapers and …” The thought trails off into the distance, out to sea perhaps. It’s here that we discuss how human figures rarely feature in his work. In fact, the only “people” he has shot are waxwork models of long-dead monarchs for his “Portraits” series. Asked whether he likes to shoot portraits of living people, his answer is blackly comic: “Please die first, be turned into wax, and then come back. Usually my exposure times are around 20 minutes and at a small aperture. Nobody can sit for that long.” Still, it’s hard not to feel Sugimoto is just not that interested in living people as prime subject matter. After all, alongside “Seascapes” his most interesting and well-known works are his architectural photos (geometrical and usually blurred) and his long-exposure pictures of the inside of cinemas, in “Theatres”. For that series, he set the exposure time to the exact length of the film, resulting in gorgeously rendered interiors with a single uniform white light where the picture on the screen should be. No people, no faces - just time and light. Add some water and you have the essence of life itself. “Apart from the sea, which is alive, everything I shoot is dead or man-made.” This apparent disinterest in people (in his art, not in his life) is markedly different from the two other great Japanese photographers of the second half of the 20th century. Daidô Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki, both of whom were born a decade before Sugimoto, chose a different route, preferring to shoot everyone and anyone - from businessmen to down-and-outs - in styles that
abstract
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Ancient Illusion The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
Most children heading to the beach tend to be preoccupied with sandcastles and ice cream, but Hiroshi Sugimoto was no ordinary child. On this particular day he was experiencing a mini existential crisis and also sowing the seeds for a future project that would make him a hugely respected, and bankable, photographer. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is preimagined in my noodle To trace Sugimoto’s path from a young boy growing up in post-war Japan to the artist we know today is to follow a photographer who is supremely dedicated to the classic medium of photography. For the “Seascapes” series (which he began in the early 1980s), Sugimoto used a large-format camera to capture the vast expanse of our oceans, shooting at night with long exposure times. It was a period of deep reflection. Staring at the horizon Sugimoto often imagined himself to be anywhere, at any time. “I consider photography as a machine that allows me to go back and forth through time,” he says. “As a medium though, it’s only been 170 years or so since its invention. For that long, many people believed what they saw was reality, but now with the introduction of digital photography, the form has become the same as painting. You can manipulate anything you want. That’s why I call digital photography a different medium. It’s not photography.” Sugimoto’s answer may seem curt, but he is anything but. Dressed impeccably in a light blue cotton shirt and dark blue blazer, he is soft-spoken and disarmingly polite. He’s in Hong Kong to give a talk at the Asia Society’s Arts and Museum Summit, and is enjoying his first hours back in the city he last visited more than half a century ago. “It was 1962. I was a 14-year-old high school kid,” he says, chuckling at the memory. “I remember Hong Kong well, but what’s this? It’s totally changed. It’s been destroyed. There are skyscrapers and …” The thought trails off into the distance, out to sea perhaps. It’s here that we discuss how human figures rarely feature in his work. In fact, the only “people” he has shot are waxwork models of long-dead monarchs for his “Portraits” series. Asked whether he likes to shoot portraits of living people, his answer is blackly comic: “Please die first, be turned into wax, and then come back. Usually my exposure times are around 20 minutes and at a small aperture. Nobody can sit for that long.” Still, it’s hard not to feel Sugimoto is just not that interested in living
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abstract
Fossils are just like photography people as prime subject matter. After all, alongside “Seascapes” his most interesting and well-known works are his architectural photos (geometrical and usually blurred) and his long-exposure pictures of the inside of cinemas, in “Theatres”. For that series, he set the exposure time to the exact length of the film, resulting in gorgeously rendered interiors with a single uniform white light where the picture on the screen should be. No people, no faces - just time and light. Add some water and you have the essence of life itself. “Apart from the sea, which is alive, everything I shoot is dead or man-made.” This apparent disinterest in people (in his art, not in his life) is markedly different from the two other great Japanese photographers of the second half of the 20th century. Daidô Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki, both of whom were born a decade before Sugimoto, chose a different route, preferring to shoot everyone and anyone - from businessmen to down-and-outs - in styles that tended to be closer to exposé and documentary: wild, energetic, chaotic, and hyper sexual. It was Araki who said that photography was like penetration, a philosophy Sugimoto disagrees with. “I don’t like that style at all. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is pre-imagined in my noodle,” he says, tapping his head. “Reality can be made according to my own imagination. I don’t have to go out and search. There shouldn’t be surprises.” This patient approach to his work results in a striking serenity in the final image, which is reflected in his personal nature but at odds with his upbringing. “Quite the contrary,” he says, resolutely. “I was born in 1948, not long after the Japanese surrender. Tokyo had been heavily bombed, and my house was only temporary. There were 30 or 40 people sleeping in one room so it was very chaotic.” My first traceable memory is the seascape and the sharp line made by the horizon. I was about four years old and my family and I were on a train heading to a resort for the summer. I thought how beautiful the scene was and then I realized: ‘I am here. I am conscious. But who am I?’ After that, my memory just fades away into the darkness.” Hiroshi Sugimoto is best known for his large-format photographs of dioramas, seascapes and buildings, but he is also a collector and was once an antiquities dealer. He talks to Apollo about the links between his collection and his art, and about capturing the passing of time. Sugimoto is a master of the long exposure and the large-format camera; the scenes are static and preserved, but in
abstract
89
The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
88
abstract
Most children heading to the beach tend to be preoccupied with sandcastles and ice cream, but Hiroshi Sugimoto was no ordinary child. On this particular day he was experiencing a mini existential crisis and also sowing the seeds for a future project that would make him a hugely respected, and bankable, photographer. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is preimagined in my noodle To trace Sugimoto’s path from a young boy growing up in post-war Japan to the artist we know today is to follow a photographer who is supremely dedicated to the classic medium of photography. For the “Seascapes” series (which he began in the early 1980s), Sugimoto used a large-format camera to capture the vast expanse of our oceans, shooting at night with long exposure times. It was a period of deep reflection. Staring at the horizon Sugimoto often imagined himself to be anywhere, at any time. “I consider photography as a machine that allows me to go back and forth through time,” he says. “As a medium though, it’s only been 170 years or so since its invention. For that long, many people believed what they saw was reality, but now with the introduction of digital photography, the form has become the same as painting. You can manipulate anything you want. That’s why I call digital photography a different medium. It’s not photography.” Sugimoto’s answer may seem curt, but he is anything but. Dressed impeccably in a light blue cotton shirt and dark blue blazer, he is soft-spoken and disarmingly polite. He’s in Hong Kong to give a talk at the Asia Society’s Arts and Museum Summit, and is enjoying his first hours back in the city he last visited more than half a century ago. “It was 1962. I was a 14-year-old high school kid,” he says, chuckling at the memory. “I remember Hong Kong well, but what’s this? It’s totally changed. It’s been destroyed. There are skyscrapers and …” The thought trails off into the distance, out to sea perhaps. It’s here that we discuss how human figures rarely feature in his work. In fact, the only “people” he has shot are waxwork models of long-dead monarchs for his “Portraits” series. Asked whether he likes to shoot portraits of living people, his answer is blackly comic: “Please die first, be turned into wax, and then come back. Usually my exposure times are around 20 minutes and at a small aperture. Nobody can sit for that long.” Still, it’s hard not to feel Sugimoto is just not that interested in living “It was 1962. I was a 14-year-old high school kid,” he says, chuckling at the memory. “I remember Hong Kong well, but what’s this? It’s totally changed. It’s been destroyed. There are skyscrapers and …” The thought trails off into the distance, out to sea perhaps. It’s here that we discuss how human figures rarely feature in his work. In fact, the only “people” he has shot are waxwork models of long-dead monarchs for his “Portraits” series. Asked whether he likes to shoot portraits of living people, his answer is blackly comic: “Please die first, be turned into wax, and then come back. Usually my exposure times are around 20 minutes and at a small aperture. Nobody can sit for that long.”
abstract
89
88
abstract
Most children heading to the beach tend to be preoccupied with sandcastles and ice cream, but Hiroshi Sugimoto was no ordinary child. On this particular day he was experiencing a mini existential crisis and also sowing the seeds for a future project that would make him a hugely respected, and bankable, photographer. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is preimagined in my noodle To trace Sugimoto’s path from a young boy growing up in post-war Japan to the artist we know today is to follow a photographer who is supremely dedicated to the classic medium of photography. For the “Seascapes” series (which he began in the early 1980s), Sugimoto used a large-format camera to capture the vast expanse of our oceans, shooting at night with long exposure times. It was a period of deep reflection. Staring at the horizon Sugimoto often imagined himself to be anywhere, at any time. “I consider photography as a machine that allows me to go back and forth through time,” he says. “As a medium though, it’s only been 170 years or so since its invention. For that long, many people believed what they saw was reality, but now with the introduction of digital photography, the form has become the
abstract
89
The perception of human existence. How do you read what is outside your body
92
abstract
with his open acknowledgement of the scene’s artificiality, demonstrates both his playful curiosity and also his rigorous technique. ‘The stuffed animals positioned before painted backdrops looked utterly fake,’ Sugimoto has said before of the Dioramas photographs. ‘Yet by taking a quick peek with one eye closed, all perspective vanished, and suddenly they looked very real. I’d found a way to see the world as a camera does. However fake the subject, once photographed, it’s as good as real.’ Sugimoto speaks both English and Japanese but is, unsurprisingly, most comfortable expressing himself visually. As he walks me through a list of what’s been packed off and what still remains here, he makes a point of showing me precisely what the value of each object is to him. He flips to an illustration of a woman’s rib cage in the French anatomy book. ‘This looks like a beautiful lady being opened while she is alive,’ he says, pointing to her face, which, it’s true, is expressive and aware despite the fact that her back is spliced open to reveal the bones and tissues. ‘On the contrary,’ Sugimoto says, ‘in British 18th-century anatomy books, the body’s expressions are completely dead. But this is almost like an angel – an angel being opened.’ A fossil is just like a photograph. ‘One side is negative, one side is positive. Same thing.’ Sugimoto is much more Zen about his practice of collecting than he is about his art. But obsession goes some way to explain
his owning, for example, early editions of Isaac Newton’s Optics and the Principia Mathematics. ‘I can study them,’ Sugimoto explains to me patiently. ‘I just want to stay with them and I want to live with them. Some collectors want to buy [something] at auction and put it in storage and put it back to auction after a few years – as if it’s just investment. I’m interested in how the human eye captures images and reads the images and makes meaning out of them,’ he says. ‘So, in general, I just want to know what is going on in our world. And how a human being is aware of the outside of himself or herself. As a photographer, that’s what I was interested in in the first place: the perception of human existence. How do you read what is outside your body?’ Sugimoto is not concerned with making his own work appear timeless; he is more interested in capturing an idea of history – a precise sensation of weight that time can create – with an image. When I ask Sugimoto if he worries that the human lifespan is too short a time to do everything we might want to do, he is charmingly unfazed. ‘Well, living to 100 is nothing,’ he says. He raises his arm to the window: ‘The Empire State Building on Manhattan island – it probably won’t survive for more than 200 or 300 years. The age expectation of concrete is probably 100, 200 years old. It will deteriorate. Through my collection I get a sense of time, of the passage of time, the history, the meaning of history. I just want to feel it through the object.’
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93
Final Magazine: Front Cover
Spring 2017: vol. 3: photo issue
theory vol. 3
ON PHOTOGRAPHY SUSAN SONTAG
HUMANKIND LINGERS UNREGENERATELY IN PLATO’S CAVE , still revel-
that they will be able to loot, rape, kill, or do what-
ing, its age-old habit, in mere images of the truth.
the suitcase of booty that Michel-Ange and Ulysse
But being educated by photographs is not like being
triumphantly bring home, years later, to their wives
educated by older, more artisanal images. For one
turns out to contain only picture postcards, hun-
thing, there are a great many more images around,
dreds of them, of Monuments, Department Stores,
claiming our attention. The inventory started in 1839
Mammals, Wonders of Nature, Methods of Trans-
and since then just about everything has been pho-
port, Works of Art, and other classified treasures
tographed, or so it seems. This very insatiability of
from around the globe. Godard’s gag vividly paro-
the photographing eye changes the terms of confine-
dies the equivocal magic of the photographic image.,
ment in the cave, our world. In teaching us a new vi-
Photographs are perhaps the most mysterious of all
sual code, photographs alter and enlarge our notions
the objects that make up, and thicken, the environ-
of what is worth looking at and what we have a right
ment we recognize as modern. Photographs really
to observe. They are a grammar and, even more
are experience captured, and the camera is the ideal
importantly, an ethics of seeing. Finally, the most
arm of consciousness in its acquisitive mood.
grandiose result of the photographic enterprise is to give us the sense that can hold the whole world in our heads -- as ananthology of images
TO COLLECT PHOTOGRAPHS IS TO COLLECT THE WORLD. Movies and
ever else they please to the enemy, and get rich. But
TO PHOTOGRAPH IS TO APPROPRIATE THE THING PHOTOGRAPHED. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge -- and, therefore, like power. A now notorious first fall into alienation, habituating
out; but with still photographs the image is also an
people to abstract the world into printed words,
object, lightweight, cheap to produce, easy to carry
is supposed to have engendered that surplus of
about, accumulate, store. In Godard’s Les Cara-
Faustian energy and psychic damage needed
biniers(1963), two sluggish lumpen-peasants are
to build modern, inorganic societies. But print
lured into joining the King’s Army by the promise
seems a less treacherous form of leaching out
IMAGE FROM -- GODARD’S LES CARABINIERS (1963)
television programs light up walls, flicker, and go
p. 3
the world, of turning it into a mental object, than
photographs. Both the order and the exact time for
photographic images, which now provide most of
looking at each photograph are imposed; and there
the knowledge people have about the look of the
is a gain in visual legibility and emotional impact.
past and the reach of the present. What is written
But photographs transcribed in a film cease to be
about a person or an event is frankly an interpre-
collectable objects, as they still are when served up
tation, as are handmade visual statements, like
in books.
paintings and drawings. Photographed images much as pieces of it, miniatures of reality that
PHOTOGRAPHS FURNISH EVIDENCE. Something we hear about, but doubt,
anyone can make or acquire.
seems proven when we’re shown a photograph of
do not seem to be statements about the world so
PHOTOGRAPHS, WHICH FIDDLE WITH THE SCALE OF THE WORLD,
it. In one version of its utility, the camera record incriminates. Starting with their use by the Paris police in the murderous roundup of Communards in
themselves get reduced, blown up, cropped,
June 1871, photographs became a useful tool of mod-
retouched, doctored, tricked out. They age,
ern states in the surveillance and control of their in-
plagued by the usual ills of paper objects;
creasingly mobile populations. In another version of
they disappear; they become valuable, and get
its utility, the camera record justifies. A photograph
bought and sold; they are reproduced. Pho-
passes for incontrovertible proof that a given thing
tographs, which package the world, seem to
happened. The picture may distort; but there is
invite packaging. They are stuck in albums,
always a presumption that something exists, or did
framed and set on tables, tacked on walls, pro-
exist, which is like what’s in the picture. Whatever
jected as slides. Newspapers and magazines
the limitations (through amateurism) or pretensions
feature them; cops alphabetize them; muse-
(through artistry) of the individual photographer,
ums exhibit them; publishers compile them.
a photograph -- any photograph -- seems to have a
FOR MANY DECADES THE BOOK HAS BEEN THE MOST INFLUENTIAL way of arranging (and usually miniaturiz-
more innocent, and therefore more accurate, relation to visible reality than do other mimetic objects. Virtuosi of the noble image like Alfred Stieglitz and Paul Strand, composing mighty, unforgettable pho-
ing) photographs, thereby guaranteeing them lon-
tographs decade after decade, still want, first of all,
gevity, if not immortality -- photographs are fragile
to show something “out there,” just like the Polaroid
objects, easily torn or mislaid -- and a wider public.
owner for whom photographs are a handy, fast form
The photograph in a book is, obviously, the image
of note-taking, or the shutterbug with a Brownie
of an image. But since it is, to begin with, a printed,
who takes snapshots as souvenirs of daily life.
smooth object, a photograph loses much less of its painting does. Still, the book is not a wholly satis-
WHILE A PAINTING OR A PROSE DESCRIPTION can never be other than a
factory scheme for putting groups of photographs
narrowly selective interpretation, a photograph
into general circulation. The sequence in which the
can be treated as a nar rowly selective trans-
photographs are to be looked at is proposed by the
parency. But despite the presumption of veracity
order of pages, but nothing holds readers to the rec-
that gives all photographs authority, interest, se-
ommended order or indicates the amount of time
ductiveness, the work that photographers do is no
to be spent on each photograph. Chris Marker’s
generic exception to the usually shady commerce
film, Si j’avais quatre dromadaires (1966), a bril-
between art and truth. Even when photographers
liantly orchestrated meditation on photographs of
are most concerned with mirroring reality, they
all sorts and themes, suggests a subtler and more
are still haunted by tacit imperatives of taste and
rigorous way of packaging (and enlarging) still
conscience. The immensely gifted members of the
essential quality when reproduced in a book than a
On Photography
IMAGE FROM -- GODARD’S LES CARABINIERS (1963)
Farm Security Administration photographic project
as David Octavius Hill and Julia Margaret Cameron
of the late 1930s (among them Walker Evans, Dor-
who used the camera as a means of getting paint-
othea Lange, Ben Shahn, Russell Lee) would take
erly images, the point of taking photographs was a
dozens of frontal pictures of one of their sharecrop-
vast departure from the aims of painters. From its
per subjects until satisfied that they had gotten just
start, photography implied the capture of the largest
the right look on film -- the precise expression on
possible number of subjects. Painting never had so
the subject’s face that supported their own notions
imperial a scope. The subsequent industrialization
about poverty, light, dignity, texture, exploitation,
of camera technology only carried out a promise
and geometry. In deciding how a picture should
inherent in photography from its very beginning: to
look, in preferring one exposure to another, pho-
democratize all experiences by translating them into
tographers are always imposing standards on their
images.
subjects. Although there is a sense in which the camphotographs are as much an interpretation of the
THAT AGE WHEN TAKING PHOTOGRAPHS REQUIRED a cumbersome and
world as paintings and drawings are. Those occa-
expensive contraption -- the toy of the clever, the
sions when the taking of photographs is relatively
wealthy, and the obsessed -- seems remote indeed
undiscriminating, promiscuous, or self-effacing do
from the era of sleek pocket cameras that invite
not lessen the didacticism of the whole enterprise.
anyone to take pictures. The first cameras, made in
This very passivity -- and ubiquity -- of the pho-
France and England in the early 1840s, had only in-
tographic record is photography’s “message,” its
ventors and buffs to operate them. Since there were
aggression.
then no professional photographers, there could
era does indeed capture reality, not just interpret it,
IMAGES WHICH IDEALIZE ARE NO LESS AGGRESSIVE than work which makes
not be amateurs either, and taking photographs had no clear social use; it was a gratuitous, that is, an artistic activity, though with few pretensions to
a virtue of plainness. There is an aggression implicit
being an art. It was only with its industrialization
in every use of the camera. This is as evident in the
that photography came into its own as art. As in-
1840s and 1850s, photography’s glorious first two de-
dustrialization provided social uses for the opera-
cades, as in all the succeeding decades, during which
tions of the photographer, so the reaction against
technology made possible an ever increasing spread
these uses reinforced the self-consciousness of
of that mentality which looks at the world as a set of
photography-as-art.
potential photographs. Even for such early masters
p. 5
On Photography
theory vol. 3
PORTRAIT OF BERENICE ABBOTT
p. 7
The challenge for me has first been to see things, as they are, whether a portrait, a city street, or a bouncing ball. In a word I H AV E T R I E D T O
BE OBJ E C T I V E
A stylish, confident and beautiful young woman whose looks and androgynous style were in tune with the times, Abbott took up photography by accident, encouraged by Man Ray. She posed for him in 1921 and, soon after, became his assistant. Impressed by her instinctive ability, he allowed her to use his darkroom to develop her own work. Initially funded by Peggy Guggenheim, the American socialite and art-lover, she found her own studio, where her sitters included Jean Cocteau, André Gide and James Joyce alongside his wife Nora, his daughter Lucia, and his publisher Sylvia Beach. Many of Abbott’s early portraits were first shown on the walls of Beach’s famous Paris bookstore, Shakespeare and Company. “To be done by Man Ray and Berenice Abbott meant you were rated as somebody,” Beach wrote.
From the beginning, Abbott was a formally ambitious photographer. Her use of stark settings, moody lighting and eye-level framing created a series of memorable portraits in which the subject’s presence is all. Soon, though, she had abandoned portraiture for images in which people were palpable only by their absence. On a trip back to New York in 1929, she was taken by the energy and momentum of the city. Returning there soon afterwards, she roamed the streets with a hand-held camera, recording shop fronts, street scenes and working people, perhaps influenced by the great Eugène Atget, whom she had met shortly before his death and whose reputation she worked tirelessly to ensure.
Federal Art Project
WATER WAVES CHANGE DIRECTION. CHANGING NEW YORK SERIES
‘ C R E AT I V E ’ mean to build,
approach, it sings a song of life
N O T D E AT H .
upon, to be subjective? Living photography is positive in its
to initiate, to give out, to act - rather than to be acted
Does not the very word
theory vol. 3
theory vol. 3
STANDING WAVES
p. 11
Scientists are terrible photographers that’s why T H EY N E E D M E .
In 1932, her aesthetic shifted and, using a large-format camera, she began photographing the architecture of the city in greater detail, often from dramatic points of view. She famously shot the Flatiron Building from below and Manhattan at night from above – perched on top of the Empire State Building. A now iconic book, Changing New York, appeared in 1939. As her “manifesto” shows, she had the world of science in her sights.
Abbott’s photographs offer an opportunity to reflect on not only the ways that science influences art, but also on how art influences science. Her images represent an unexpected melding of science and art, which produces an aesthetic that compels the viewer while also conveying scientific ideas.
“Her foresight is extraordinary,” says Burbridge, “given that she conceived her science photography project in 1939 and it was not really brought to fruition through proper funding until late 1958, when the Russian Sputnik was launched and American investment in science suddenly became intense.”
Federal Art Project
theory vol. 3
COLLISION OF MOVING SPHERE AND A STATIONARY SPHERE. REFLECTED WATER WAVES. INTERFERENCE PATTERN
The developed picture is both formally BEAUTIFUL AND
MYSTERIOUS
p. 13
Initially, Abbott sought out commercial assignments for companies such as Standard Oil and IBM. Simultaneously, she was experimenting with ways to photograph magnetism and electricity and, in her attic, inventing various photography machines, including a “Super Sight” camera that allowed her to enlarge an object’s projection before exposure rather than on a negative in the darkroom. In all this, she was self-taught and utterly meticulous, planning exposures to the second and employing stroboscopic lights to trace the trajectory of bouncing metal balls. Describing one of her wave pattern images, she said: “My idea was to do a Rayogram in motion. Moholy-Nagy and Man Ray had done pictures by putting objects on sensitized paper but I wanted to do the same thing in motion.” To this end, she placed a piece of light sensitive paper in the bottom of a developing tray and, as she put it “flashed the light”.
Ancient Illusions
The Work of Hiroshi Sugimoto
BALTIC SEA, RĂœGEN, 1996
IT’S NOT PHOTOGRAPHY
p. 15
Most children heading to the beach tend to be preoccupied with sandcastles and ice cream, but Hiroshi Sugimoto was no ordinary child. On this particular day he was experiencing a mini existential crisis and also sowing the seeds for a future project that would make him a hugely respected, and bankable, photographer. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is pre-imagined in my noodle To trace Sugimoto’s path from a young boy growing up in postwar Japan to the artist we know today is to follow a photographer who is supremely dedicated to the classic medium of photography. For the “Seascapes” series (which he began in the early 1980s), Sugimoto used a large-format camera to capture the vast expanse of our oceans, shooting at night with long exposure times. It was a period of deep reflection. Staring at the Sugimoto often imagined himself to be anywhere, at any time. “I consider photography as a machine that allows me to go back and forth through time,” he says. “As a medium though, it’s only been 170 years or so since its invention. For that long, many people believed what they saw was reality, but now with the introduction of digital photography, the form has become the same as painting.
You can manipulate anything you want. That’s why I call digital photography a different medium. It’s not photography.” Sugimoto’s answer may seem curt, but he is anything but. Dressed in a light blue cotton shirt and dark blue blazer, he is soft-spoken and disarmingly polite. He’s in Hong Kong to give a talk at the Asia Society’s Arts and Museum Summit, and is enjoying his first few hours back in the city he last visited more than half a century ago. “It was 1962. I was a 14-year-old high school kid,” he says, chuckling at the memory. “I remember Hong Kong well, but what’s this? It’s totally changed. It’s been destroyed. There are skyscrapers and …” The thought trails off into the distance, out to sea perhaps. It’s here that we discuss how human figures rarely feature in his work. In fact, the only “people” he has shot are waxwork models of long-dead monarchs for his “Portraits” series. Asked whether he likes to shoot portraits of living people, his answer is blackly comic: “Please die first, be turned into wax, and then come back. Usually my exposure times are around 20 minutes and at a small aperture. Nobody can sit for that long.”
abstract
89
theory vol. 3
p. 17
I CONSIDER PHOTOGRAPHY AS A MACHINE THAT ALLOWS ME TO GO BACK AND FORTH THROUGH TIME Still, it’s hard not to feel Sugimoto is just not that interested in living people as prime subject matter. After all, alongside “Seascapes” his most interesting and well-known works are his architectural photos (geometrical and usually blurred) and his long-exposure pictures of the inside of cinemas, in “Theatres”. For that series, he set the exposure time to the exact length of the film, resulting in gorgeously rendered interiors with a single uniform white light where the picture on the screen should be. No people, no faces - just time and light. Add some water and you have the essence of life itself. “Apart from the sea, which is alive, everything I shoot is dead or man-made.” This apparent disinterest in people (in his art, not in his life) is markedly different from the two other great Japanese photographers of the second half of the 20th century. Daidô Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki, both of whom were born a decade before Sugimoto, chose a different route, preferring to shoot everyone and anyone - from businessmen to downand-outs - in styles that tended to be closer to exposé and documentary: wild, energetic, chaotic, and hyper sexual. It was Araki who said that photography was like penetration, a philosophy Sugimoto disagrees with. “I don’t like that style at all. I never hung around with my camera to search for something. That’s the hunter’s idea. In my case everything is pre-imagined in my noodle,” he says, tapping his head. “Reality can be made according to my own imagination. I don’t have to go out and search. There shouldn’t be surprises.” This patient approach to his work results in a striking serenity in the final image, which is reflected in his personal nature but at odds with his upbringing. “Quite the contrary,” he says, resolutely. “I was born in 1948, not long after the Japanese surrender. Tokyo had been heavily bombed, and my house was only temporary. There were 30 or 40 people sleeping in one room so it was very chaotic.” My first traceable memory is the seascape and the sharp line made by the horizon. I was about four years old and my family and I were on a train heading to a resort for the summer. I thought how beautiful the scene was and then I realized: ‘I am here. I am conscious. But who am I?’ After that, my memory just fades away into the darkness.” Hiroshi Sugimoto is best known for his
CARRIBIAN SEA, YUKATAN, 1990 SEA OF BUDDHA, 1995
Ancient Illusions
theory vol. 3
I GET A SENSE OF TIME, OF THE PASSAGE OF TIME, THE HISTORY, THE MEANING OF HISTORY. I JUST WANT TO FEEL IT THROUGH THE OBJECT.
dead. But this is almost like an angel – an angel being opened.’ A fossil is just like a photograph. ‘One side is negative, one side is positive. Same thing.’ Sugimoto is much more Zen about his practice of collecting than he is about his art. But obsession goes some way to explain his owning, for example, early editions of Isaac Newton’s Optics and the Principia Mathematics. ‘I can study them,’ Sugimoto explains to me patiently. ‘I just want to stay with them and I want to live with them. Some collectors want to buy [something] at auction and put it in storage and put it back to auction after a few years – as if it’s just investment. I’m interested in how the human eye captures images and reads the images and makes meaning out of them,’ he says. ‘So, in general, I just want to know what is going on in our world. And how a human being is aware of the outside of himself or herself. As a photographer, that’s what I was interested in in the first place: the perception of human existence. How do you read what is outside your body?’ Sugimoto is not concerned with making his own work appear timeless; he is more interested in capturing an idea of history – a precise sensation of weight that time can create – with an image. When I ask Sugimoto if he worries that the human lifespan is too short a time to do everything we might want to do, he is charmingly unfazed. ‘Well, living to 100 is nothing,’ he says. He raises his arm to the window: ‘The Empire State Building on Manhattan island – it probably won’t survive for more than 200 or 300 years. The age expectation of concrete is probably 100, 200 years old. It will deteriorate. Through my collection I get a sense of time, of the passage of time, the history, the meaning of history. I just want to feel it through the object.’
large-format photographs of dioramas, seascapes and buildings, but he is also a collector and was once an antiquities dealer. He talks to Apollo about the links between his collection and his art, and about capturing the passing of time. Sugimoto is a master of the long exposure and the large-format camera; the scenes are static and preserved, but in the true black and white tones of his gelatin silver prints, they are not entirely lifeless, either. Sugimoto’s ability to trick the eye – even in just an instant juxtaposed with his open acknowledgement of the scene’s
artificiality, demonstrates both his playful curiosity and also his rigorous technique. ‘The stuffed animals positioned before painted backdrops looked utterly fake,’ Sugimoto has said before of the Dioramas photographs. ‘Yet by taking a quick peek with one eye closed, all perspective vanished, and suddenly they looked very real. I’d found a way to see the world as a camera does. However fake the subject, once photographed, it’s as good as real.’ Sugimoto speaks both English and Japanese but is, unsurprisingly, most comfortable expressing himself visually. As he walks me through a list of what’s been packed off and what still remains here, he makes a point of showing me precisely what the value of each object is to him. He flips to an illustration of a woman’s rib cage in the French anatomy book. ‘This looks like a beautiful lady being opened while she is alive,’ he says, pointing to her face, which, it’s true, is expressive and aware despite the fact that her back is spliced open to reveal the bones and tissues. ‘On the contrary,’ Sugimoto says, ‘in British 18thcentury anatomy books, the body’s expressions are completely
CARIBBEAN SEA, (1980)
p. 19
Ancient Illusions
theory vol. 3
p. 21
Colophon: Theory was designed by Zachary William Butenas for Typographic Systems, 2017. All of the images and text were sourced from publications and the intenet, and are only used for design education purposes. Fonts: Baskerville, Gil sans, Futura, Sabon, Bodoni. Printed at Jayhawk Ink, Lawrence KS.
Final Magazine: Back Cover