Hiroshi Sugimoto’s immense folding screens feature photographs of Japanese landmarks of sacred significance delicately printed onto rice paper. The screens, known as byobu, combine traditional and contemporary artforms, incorporating photographic techniques and materials to produce works that draw from Japanese artistic traditions, connecting the material cultures of antiquity and the contemporary.
These images depict the color of light Sugimoto observed through a prism in his Tokyo studio. Using Polaroid film, the artist recorded sections of the rainbow spectrum projected into a darkened chamber, paying particular attention to the spaces and gaps between hues. The resulting works, each measuring approximately 5’ framed, are vivid, near-sculptural renderings of pure light.
Perhaps his most iconic series, these long exposures of classic movie houses around the world are emblematic of Sugimoto’s time-eluding photography. “One afternoon I walked into a cheap cinema in the East Village with a large-format camera,” recounts Sugimoto. “As soon as the movie started, I fixed the shutter at a wide-open aperture. When the movie finished two hours later, I clicked the shutter closed. That evening I developed the film, and my vision exploded behind my eyes.”
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.”
