In connection with Hiroshi Sugimoto’s 2023 solo exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London, gallery director Ralph Rugoff presents an introduction to artist’s work. He begins with Polar Bear, 1976, the first of Sugimoto’s Diorama series and the work which the photographer credits as beginning his life as an artist. Rugoff also looks at Theaters, a series in which Sugimoto condensed films shown at New York movie theaters into a singular still image. The photographer later replicated this approach with series set in drive-ins, opera houses, and abandoned theaters. Rugoff also discusses Sugimoto’s Portraits series, in which waxworks are seemingly brought back to life by the artist’s lens.