Hiroshi Sugimoto

Hiroshi Sugimoto has created some of the most enduring images of our time. For over 50 years, the renowned Japanese photographer’s contemplative exploration of time, memory and history stretches the photographic medium’s ability to document and invent. While best known for his photographs, Sugimoto’s multidisciplinary practice extends to architecture, sculpture and art direction for performing arts productions.

Hiroshi Sugimoto was born in 1948 in Tokyo. He first did a degree in politics and sociology in 1970, however, retrained as an artist when he moved to the United States and received his BFA from the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena in 1974. Soon after Sugimoto settled in New York City and began working as a dealer of Japanese antiquities in SoHo.

Sugimoto’s early influence in photography reportedly began during his high-school years when he would photograph film footage of Audrey Hepburn as her films played in movie theatres. A master of the analogue process, Sugimoto’s dramatic black-and-white photographs of theatres, landscapes and the sea are taken with his signature use of an 8x10 large-format camera and extremely long exposures. While the method is highly technical, the result are images that distil the essence of time, evoking a sense of eternity and the sublime.

The photographer began his first series ‘Diorama’ upon his arrival in New York in 1974. Sugimoto was fascinated by the stuff animals against the painted backdrops in the dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History. This series features life-like scenes of meticulously staged dioramas of animals and prehistoric life. By capturing these artificial scenes with a large-format camera, Sugimoto creates a sense of uncanny likeness to reality in his images.

His iconic ‘Seascapes’ series captures the serene, timeless horizon where the sea meets the sky. These photographs, taken at various locations around the world, reflect Sugimoto’s fascination with the passage of time and the natural world’s enduring presence.

Sugimoto’s photographs are celebrated internationally. In 2007 Christie’s New York sold his 1991–92 triptych Black Sea, Ozuluce; Yellow Sea Cheju; Red Sea, Safaga for US$1,888,000, setting a world auction record for the artist. In addition to his photographs, Sugimoto has also made significant contributions to architecture. He founded his architecture practice in Tokyo and have worked on projects including a commission at Naoshima Contemporary Art Center, a reimagined lobby for the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and the ‘Glass Tea House Mondrian’, a temporary pavilion designed by Sugimoto for Le Stanze del Vetro in Venice.