Listen to me carefully, you bunch of snobs – Hiroshi Sugimoto is not simply a photographer, he is a sorcerer of time. For more than fifty years, this Japanese alchemist has been transforming reality into illusion and illusion into reality with surgical precision that would make a Parisian neurosurgeon turn pale with envy. In a world where everyone rushes to immortalize the moment with their smartphone, Sugimoto takes a radical counterpoint to this digital frenzy by creating images that transcend our ordinary perception of time.
Sugimoto uses a 19th-century style 8×10 large format camera, black and white film, and extremely long exposure times. Armed with this large format camera like a magic wand, Sugimoto takes us through temporal dimensions with the elegance of a Zen master and the rigor of a quantum physicist. His main artistic quest? Capturing the very essence of time, that elusive concept that tortured Bergson’s mind in his major work “Creative Evolution”. Like the French philosopher who saw in pure duration an indivisible continuity, Sugimoto compresses and dilates time in his images with a mastery that defies understanding. He doesn’t merely photograph moments, he captures durations, entire epochs, sometimes even eternity itself.
Take his “Theaters” series – a concept so bold it becomes almost insolent. Photographing an entire film in a single exposure? Only a mind as brilliantly twisted as Sugimoto’s could conceive such an idea. The result? Luminous screens that shine like portals to another dimension, surrounded by sumptuous theatrical architectures that seem to float in a temporal limbo. These images are reminiscent of Plato’s cave, where spectators, chained to their seats, see only the shadows of reality projected on the walls. But Sugimoto goes further – he captures the very essence of our relationship with time and moving images.
In “UA Playhouse, New York” (1978), the illuminated screen becomes an artificial sun that bathes the Art Deco architecture in spectral light. The golden ornaments and complex moldings emerge from darkness like the vestiges of a lost civilization. Time itself seems suspended, frozen in a photographic eternity that defies our usual understanding of duration. Each image in this series is a visual meditation on the very nature of cinema – this art that creates the illusion of movement from still images.
His “Seascapes” perhaps represent the pinnacle of his reflection on time. These marine horizons of absolute purity reduce our world to its simplest expression: a line between sky and sea. It’s as if Sugimoto had found a way to photograph Sartre’s nothingness, this existential void that both terrifies and fascinates us. These images are deceptively simple – they remind us that we are but grains of sand on the beach of eternity, ephemeral spectators before the immensity of time.
Take “Bass Strait, Table Cape” (1997) – an image that captures the Tasmanian Sea in all its sublime austerity. The horizon line, with mathematical precision, divides the image into two subtly different zones of gray. The sky and water almost merge, creating an abstraction that transports us beyond the simple seascape. This image could have been taken a thousand years ago, or in a thousand years – it exists outside of time, in a dimension where seconds no longer matter.
Sugimoto’s technical mastery is simply hallucinatory. His prolonged exposures, sometimes lasting several hours, transform his negatives into true time capsules. He manipulates light as a Renaissance painter manipulated his pigments, with a maniacal precision bordering on obsession. But it is precisely this obsession that gives his work its philosophical depth. Each image is the result of monastic patience, of absolute concentration reminiscent of Zen meditative practices.
In his “Dioramas” series, Sugimoto plays with our perceptions like an illusionist with his cards. By photographing natural history museum dioramas, he achieves the tour de force of bringing stuffed animals back to life, creating a delicious confusion between the real and the artificial. These images refer us to Walter Benjamin’s reflections on the mechanical reproduction of art and the loss of aura. But Sugimoto, the magician that he is, manages to restore an aura to these frozen scenes, transforming the fake into real in a photographic sleight of hand that defies all logic.
“Polar Bear” (1976), his first image from this series, is a true tour de force. The polar bear, frozen in its predatory leap above a dead seal, seems more alive than life itself. The artificial snow becomes real under his lens, the painted background transforms into a real Arctic landscape. This image is not simply a photograph of a diorama – it’s a deep reflection on the nature of representation itself, on our constant need to preserve, mummify, freeze the living.
The conceptual coherence of his work is impressive. Whether photographing movie screens, still seas, or mathematical models, Sugimoto tirelessly pursues his quest for lost time – not in the Proustian manner of a nostalgic search, but rather like a mad scientist attempting to dissect seconds to understand their essence. Each series is a new experiment, a new attempt to capture the uncapturable.
His portraits of Madame Tussauds wax figures are perhaps his most disturbing works. By photographing these simulacra of human beings with the same care he would give to living subjects, he creates images that make us doubt our own reality. Henry VIII, Diana, Oscar Wilde – all seem inhabited by a spectral presence that transcends death itself. It’s as if Sugimoto had found a way to photograph the souls of these historical figures through their wax doubles.
“Diana, Princess of Wales” (1999), created two years after the princess’s tragic death, is particularly troubling. The slightly averted gaze, the expression both shy and royal, the graceful pose – everything seems authentic, alive, present. And yet, we know it’s only a wax reproduction, photographed with such mastery that it becomes more real than reality. This image raises profound questions about the nature of representation, our relationship with celebrity, death, and memory.
His work on architecture pushes this reflection on time and representation even further. By photographing iconic buildings with deliberately blurred focus, Sugimoto creates images that seem to emerge from the fog of memory. The Chrysler Building, the Eiffel Tower, the World Trade Center – these monuments of modern architecture become spectral apparitions under his lens, archetypal forms that transcend their materiality.
Sugimoto’s “Mathematical Models” perhaps represent the culminating point of his formal research. These photographs of nineteenth-century mathematical models, transformed into monumental sculptures, possess an abstract beauty reminiscent of modernism’s finest achievements. But they are also deeply conceptual, exploring the relationship between the pure form of mathematics and its physical manifestation in the real world.
His “Lightning Fields” series represents an apparent break from his usual approach, but it fits perfectly into his research on the nature of time and light. By applying electrical discharges directly to photographic film, Sugimoto creates images that resemble lightning bolts frozen in time. These works are not photographs in the traditional sense – they are direct recordings of light’s action on photosensitive material.
Time, in Sugimoto’s work, is not a simple linear measure – it’s a malleable material that he sculpts at will. His photographs are windows open to infinity, portals to a dimension where time no longer exists as we know it. He achieves the feat of making us see the invisible, feel the impalpable. Each image is an invitation to transcend our ordinary perception of reality.
His latest series, “Opticks”, inspired by Isaac Newton’s work on light, pushes this exploration even further. Using prisms to decompose light and capturing the results with a Polaroid, Sugimoto creates colored abstractions that resemble photographic Rothkos. These images are proof that even after more than fifty years of career, he continues to innovate, to push the boundaries of his medium.
In a world obsessed with instantaneity, where each second is compressed, shared, consumed at the speed of light, Sugimoto offers us a pause, a breath, a moment of pure contemplation. His images are visual meditations on the very nature of existence, photographic koans that invite us to transcend our ordinary perception of time and space.
His work is living proof that photography can be much more than a simple documentary medium – it can be a philosophical tool, a time exploration machine, a bridge between the visible and the invisible. Sugimoto is not just a photographer, he is a philosopher of light, an architect of time, a magician of the image who reminds us that reality is always stranger than fiction.
In a century where contemporary art often seems lost in its own contradictions, Sugimoto remains faithful to his vision. He continues to create images that defy our understanding while touching something deeply universal within us. His work is striking proof that art can still move us, make us think, and transform us.
For those who think photography is dead in the digital age, I invite you to dive into Sugimoto’s universe. You will emerge with a new perception of time, space, and reality itself. And isn’t that the true power of art?
