Notes on Hiroshi Sugimoto

Revolution / Hiroshi Sugimoto

P. 6-7 Foreword by Armin Zweite

Contrary to photography’s conventional function as a means of reproducing “reality”, these works are pared down to the minimum in formal terms and thus more like visualized concepts through which to explore the fundamentals of life: space and time, past and present, art and science, imagination and reality. Moreover, their arresting beauty and aura cannot fail to leave a lasting impression on all those who see them.

… an oeuvre that stands out on account of its superb craftsmanship and the almost magical effect of its powerful aesthetic presence. 

“Art is technique: a means by which to materialize the invisible realm of the mind,” explains Sugimoto. “As such, my art is an emblematic rendering of part of my mind in visible form - or perhaps we might say, samplings from my consciousness. Over my many years as an artist, I have endeavored to hone my technique.”

What Sugimoto visualizes so emphatically in these new works is ultimately the presence of the aesthetic.

P. 10

For a long time it was my calling to stand in cliffs and gaze at the horizon, where the sea touches the sky. The horizon is not a straight line but a segment of a great arc. One day, standing atop a lone island peak in a remote sea, the horizon encompassing my entire field of vision, for a moment it felt as if I was floating above an immeasurable void. But then, as I viewed the horizon encircling me, I had a distinct sensation of the earth as a watery globe, a clear vision of the horizon not as an endless expanse but the edge of an oceanic sphere. 

P. 11

Obviously, the scientific views and laws we currently believe will falter and be superceded in due course. Centuries from now people will consider us as unenlightened as those who lived in the geocentric age - if humanity survives until then, that is. There remains, however, a great divide between comprehending the world and being able to explain what we ourselves are. And even then, what we can explain of the world is far less than what we cannot - though people tend be more attracted by the unexplained. In all this, I somehow feel we are nearing an era when religion and art will once again cast doubts upon science, or else an era when things better seen through to a scientific conclusion will bow to religious judgement.

P.20

Sugimoto’s pictorial strategy could be evidence of Bergson’s notion that memory is formed during cognition. As demonstrated by Wilhelm Roskamm, this refers to Bergson’s theory of time and his definition of the present. “If we consider the passing of time, Bergson paradoxically states that it is only the present that passes, while the past has not passed but perpetuates and has a continuing impact. The past repeats itself each and every moment in time, it continuously alters itself and its structure as its extends to the future. Past and present, materiality and immateriality, weave a virtual image. This virtual image is the transforming repetition of the past as well as the recollection of the present. The fact that the present does not repeat the past is due to the fact that the current movement quasi selects this virtual image, and that the weight of the past on the present results in a transformation and alteration/compression. In that sense, the virtual image is not a place of repetition but one of difference.

P.23

The search for the origins of forms of representation, which allows fossils and calotype to be compared as such, is related to Sugimoto’s seascapes inasmuch as they are also supposed to be an inherent manifestation of fundamental human experiences, which Sugimoto sees as removed from time. Faced with the horizon and the expansiveness of the sea and the sky, Sugimoto argues that his experience differs in no way from that of early humans. He declares this original experience of being as the origin of universal consciousness and his personal existence.

P.25

Sugimoto is not concerned with aesthetic issues, but rather with matters of representation, images and diagrams.

P.26

“Art is techniques: a means by which to materialize the invisible realm of the mind. As such, my art is an emblematic rendering of part of my mind in visible form - or perhaps one might say, sampling’s from my consciousness.”

P.27-28

He does not use photography for photograph’s sake but increasingly uses the mediums to examine its inherent possibilities and to convert the potential of the past into the present, give it a new place and, if possible, expand it … frequently contrarily to its original character.

P.28

A continuous horizon line determines their structure. All in all a classically balanced composition in four clearly differential parallel layers, whereby the topmost layer with its gently modulated quality takes up half the frame.

P.29

At any rate, the photograph evokes a sense of remoteness and stillness. The pale milky sheen of the layer of clouds accentuates this feeling, although it remains to be seen whether there is a boundless expanse of ocean beneath this mist.

The suggestion of distance and transcendence, however, is lost in prolonged viewing. The photographic quality of the image becomes more and more apparent and begins to dominate the graphic character of the image, thus displaying the illusory character of the work, indexical elements diminish while aesthetic ones begin to inform our perception.

P.31

The series comprising fifteen images is based on photographs taken from 1986-97. They were produced in irregular order, most of them in 1990. In 2011 and 2012 they were enlarged to measure ninety-four by forty seven inches, a double square format. The night shots are, however turned clockwise by ninety degrees, a perplexing manipulation that is not immediately obvious in some works.

P.32

This starting point for Sugimoto’s works is easily recognized. They are all nighttime photographs of the moon above the ocean. The subjects are water, sky, the celestial body, the horizon, clouds and reflections, although not all of them are discernible at any one time. Sea and sky frequently merge seamlessly; the line of the horizon is sometimes only visible in part. Apparently, Sugimoto rarely, or in some cases never presented the original images in public; he possibly even did not produce enlargements at the time. The decision in favor of the large format and to tilt the image from horizontal to vertical was only made a few months ago.

P.33

The term “revolution” is mentioned again and again in context with the ideas and photographs of Conceptual Forms, especially when describing complex curve progressions that are impossible to represent in a Euclidean, three-dimensional space. The curvatures expressed by mathematical formulae exhibit either a hyperbolic, parabolic or an elliptical course. They demonstrate that the physical-mathematical space can no longer be imagined as flat or synchronous but as the sum of spiral tracks leading from top of bottom, front to back, and left to right. The purpose is no longer the determination of lengths, angles, and distances in a box-like  space but the formulaic recording of highly complex yet continuous rotations and movements of faces.

P. 34

The question remains, however, of what Sugimoto is trying to achieve with this rotation. His result is fundamentally different from the examples mentioned above, insofar as the resulting images basically do not change their meaning. They are essentially moonlit seascapes, yet they forfeit everything their regular landscape format might evoke. The ninety-degree tilt annihilates the Romantic atmosphere, cancels out any movement in depth, and indeed, the images appear that, almost abstract, the more so when the horizon, originally separating the ocean from the sky, emerges as a sharp vertical line, bifurcating the images.

P. 35

The transformation of the horizontal into vertical amounts to a radical cataclysm in Sugimoto’s work insofar as we are refused the familiar order of top and bottom, of left and right, and the original context of a view onto the ocean, the sea, and the moon is denied.

P. 38

The bodily aspect of our perception appears repealed. This is an experience rather alien to a European consciousness oriented toward Maurice Merleau-Ponty. What makes Sugimoto’s art so fascinating is his rendering this mode of perception comprehensible in striking pictures. And he succeeds in doing so through the extraordinary aesthetic presence of his works.