Hiroshi Sugimoto

“Rather than the camera projecting the outside world onto film, I am using it to project outward the world that exists inside me.”

Hiroshi Sugimoto was born in 1948 in Japan, and divides his time between Tokyo and New York City. Working in photography since the 1970s, his multidisciplinary practice includes sculpture, performing arts production, and architecture. His work explores history and temporal existence by investigating themes of time, empiricism, and metaphysics. Grounded in technical mastery of the classical photographic tradition, he examines the ways photography can record traces of invisible but elemental forces.

Sugimoto’s artistic career has been marked by philosophical curiosity and a serial, analytical approach. For his earliest photographic series, Dioramas, which he began 1974, Sugimoto photographed displays in the American Museum of Natural History and elsewhere. Through the lens of his large-format camera, the museums’ painted backdrops and taxidermied animals are transformed by photography into enigmatically life-like scenes. Theaters, perhaps his most iconic series, comprises long exposure photographs made in classic movie houses around the world. Each exposure is made during the projection of a film, producing a glowing white screen in the center of a darkened theater and compressing time into a single image. His Seascapes, which span more than four decades, record the most elemental scene—sky and water bisected by the constant line of the horizon, a view that Sugimoto associates with the dawn of consciousness. 

Seascapes

For more than four decades, Hiroshi Sugimoto has been photographing seascapes around the world. “A sharp horizon line and a cloudless sky- here began my consciousness.” writes Sugimoto, “From there my thoughts race to the origins of human consciousness itself. The sea reminds me that within my blood remain traces of human evolution over hundreds of thousands of years.”

His Seascapes series began in 1999. Photographed with cartographic precision, each image shows sea and sky bisected by a seemingly infinite horizon. Rather than taming the subject through repeated documentation, the series grows more awesome and sublime, until the images reveal only the transient atmospherics—the thickness of fog or stillness of the water.

Water and air. These primordial substances, which make possible all life on earth, are the subject of Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Seascapes series. Sugimoto has called photography the “fossilization of time,” and the ‘Seascapes’ photographs simultaneously capture a discrete moment in time but also evoke a feeling of timelessness.

This volume, the second in a series of books on Sugimoto’s art, presents the complete series of over 200 ‘Seascapes’, some of which have never before been reproduced. All are identical in format, with the horizon line precisely bifurcating each image, though at times the sea and sky almost merge into one seamless unit. Each photograph captures a moment when the sea is placid, almost flat. Within this strict format, however, he has created a limitless array of portraits of his subjects.

Photobook

Size -250 × 277 mm
Pages – 272
Illustrations – 213
Binding – Hardback

Minimalist Photography

Minimalist photography is a form of photography that is distinguished by extreme simplicity. Sometimes in the world of photography, less is more. Minimalist photographers know that sometimes it’s important to focus solely on one particular subject, rather than overwhelm the viewer with tons of color and pattern and information. While there are plenty of successful photographers who take “busy” photographs, photographers on the other end of the spectrum – including Hiroshi Sugimoto and Hans Hiltermann – are successful for completely different reasons. When dealing with minimalism, it’s important to understand the relationship between subject and viewer, texture and pattern, and light and shadow.

Key Elements of Minimalist Photography

Minimalism can be applied to pretty much every genre of photography, including portrait, landscape, still life, architecture, and even street shooting. But minimalist photos do have a few key characteristics:

• Negative space. Minimalist photos tend to feature lots of empty, or negative, space. Negative space is composed of expanses of pure color or texture, such as a broad stretch of ocean or a grassy lawn. (And featureless white skies are a minimalist staple!)
• A small main subject. Minimalist compositions keep the subject small in the frame so that they’re dwarfed by negative space. As I discuss below, this can be done with a wide-angle lens or by shooting from a distance. In cases where the main subject isn’t small in the frame, it should be exceptionally simple (e.g., a few streaks of paint on a wall).
• Limited clutter. Minimalism emphasizes simplicity, and minimalist photos tend to feature a main subject, lots of empty space, and nothing else. Minimalist photographers carefully refine their compositions until no extra elements – such as poles or telephone lines in the background – exist. The more clutter you can eliminate from your shots, the more minimalist they’ll be.

Image Analysis

Technically – The long exposure used in this photograph creates a smooth and serene effect on the water, giving it a dreamlike quality. The soft lighting and subtle colour palette add to the overall eleagant atmosphere.

Visually – Sugimoto’s decision to place the horizon line in the lower third of the frame emphasizes the vastness of the sea and sky. The minimalistic approach, with the absence of any visible land or human presence, creates a sense of solitude and tranquillity.

Contextually – the Ligurian Sea is located along the Italian coast, known for its picturesque views and beautiful seascapes. Sugimoto’s photograph captures the essence of the Ligurian Sea, evoking a sense of calmness and introspection. It invites the viewer to contemplate the vastness of the ocean and our place within it.

Conceptually – Sugimoto’s “Seascapes” series explores the timeless and universal nature of the sea. By photographing various seascapes, he invites us to reflect on the flow of life, the passage of time, and our connection to the natural world. In “Ligurian Sea, Saviore, 1993,” the photograph embodies a sense of stillness and contemplation, inviting us to pause and appreciate the beauty of the sea.

Inspiration

By exploring the concept of minimalism. Just like Sugimoto’s minimalist approach in his seascapes, I can experiment with simplifying my compositions, focusing on the essential elements of the waves, surfers, and the ocean itself. Sugimoto’s use of long exposures. In his work, the long exposure technique creates a smooth and ethereal effect on the water. Sugimoto’s emphasis on the relationship between the sea and the sky. By paying attention to the colours, tones, and textures of the sky and how they interact with the waves, I can produce a similar response to Sugimoto’s work.

Mood board in relation to Hiroshi Sugimoto