Hiroshi Sugimoto | "all the smells are gone and the sound is gone"

25 Feb 2022

November 24, 2014 the 18th issue of Hiroji Sugimoto Today is Hiroji Sugimoto who likes theatre and lightning series. In fact, what he thinks most about is the Japanese real in the art industry.

Today is Hiroji Sugimoto

likes theatre and lightning series

Japan is a high-yielding country

and even South Korea's tolerance of movies

is a high degree of unity of mass artistry and aesthetics

but with diversified ideas and interests in the face of domestic harshness on the art industry

is a little sad

A few days ago, I went to Xiaoxitian to see Lou Ye's massage

A great niche movie can only live in self-pity in a small theater

all kinds of stupid songs are popular

what's going on

National quality determines National Aesthetics

National Aesthetics affects National quality

People in history

but Japanese culture is worthy of praise

South Korea is also worth learning

and traditional Chinese culture should not be inherited by Japan and South Korea

but do thank neighboring countries

for their desperate application to arouse Chinese anger

but what did you do in the country before other people's applications? /p>

Please follow Sina Weibo: _ absentee Miss

must be something interesting with your personality to choose

come on, start reading Hiroji Sugimoto

Hiroji Sugimoto, Born in Tokyo, Japan, received an art education in western oil painting from an early age and graduated from the United States. After studying and researching, he became a famous photographer and artist. He has a deep knowledge of Japan's attainments in ancient art, architecture, literature, and history.

Hiroshi Sugimoto Hiroshi Sugimoto

was born in 1948 in Mito-cho, Tokyo (now Taitung District). His family is Yinmei, a successful beauty agency run by Ginza, and his father is an amateur whisperer.

grew up in a small number of areas that were not bombed by air raids, and identified themselves as "pre-war Japanese."

when the European and American media ask about his place of birth, his answer is usually "occupied Japan".

1960 Western-style education in Christian schools under the influence of his mother, he entered the famous private Christian high school (present-day New Block High School) and received western art education such as oil painting and sculpture. I joined the photography club when I was in high school, and my favorite model was MAMIYA6. Based on the consideration of inheriting the family business in the future, the university is studying in the Department of Economics of Lijiao University. 1970 went to the United States in the 1970s, coinciding with the trend of the Japanese student movement. Hiroji Sugimoto, who graduated from university, had no intention of inheriting his family fortune. With his mother's consent, he went to the United States with the consent of his mother. In the same year, he entered the Art Center School of Design in Los Angeles to study photography. He graduated in 1972. 1974 Art Merchants

emigrated to New York and successively won scholarships from the New York State Government, Guggenheim, and the American Education Association to start photography. For about a decade, Hiroji Sugimoto traveled to and from New York, Japan, as an antique dealer. The experience of this period formed Sugimoto's habit of collecting Japanese ancient cultural relics in the future, as well as his attainments in Japanese ancient art, architecture, literature, and history.

1976 Hiroji Sugimoto published the first set of works, "Perspective Gallery", which set the tone of the visual creation theme of "time" and "history" through photography. the first solo exhibition was held at the South Gallery in Japan. It held its first overseas solo exhibition at the Sonnabend Gallery in New York and toured the Museum of Modern Art in Los Angeles, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Guggenheim Museum of Art in Germany, and the Cartier Foundation in France. Through Hiroji Sugimoto's creation, it was originally regarded as a low-degree-of-freedom photography media, showing new possibilities.

2001 was awarded the Hassel camera Foundation International Photography Award, which is known as the "Nobel Prize for Photography".

2005 (Mori Art Museum) of the Mori Museum in Tokyo, Japan held an extremely important and successful photography retrospective "the end of time" (End of Time), featuring more than 100 different series of works of Hiroji Sugimoto spanning 30 years from 1975 to 2005, showing both new and unpublished works, which is the most complete presentation of his life works. The number of visitors to the museum set a record.

2006 roving exhibition at the Huxhong Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., in addition to the above-mentioned series of works of different periods, it also includes a series of "the shape of ideas" shot by him with infinitely far double focal length, which conveys his concept of the shape and color of space.

2008 Seaview co-production "Black Sea, Ozuluce; Yellow" Sea, Cheju" sold for $1650000 in New York (the highest record for contemporary photography in Asia).

2009 was awarded the World Culture Remembrance Award of his Royal Highness Kao Song Palace.

Hiroji Sugimoto is known as the "last modernist". His works bring eastern and western historiography, philosophy, and aesthetics into photography, maximize the significance of photography, and raise photographic works to the level of works of art. In addition to photography creation, he also handled indoor design, Neng drama stage, shrine, and other architectural work.

Hiroshi Sugimoto once said, "memory is an incredible thing: you won't remember what happened yesterday, but you can recall the moments of your childhood." These moments pass slowly in memory, perhaps because these experiences happen for the first time, making the impression more lifelike. However, the next constant experience, up to adulthood, is a repetition of the past, so it gradually becomes insignificant. Carefully recall your earliest memories, all the way from childhood, you can find that memories are always piled up, layer upon layer. "

time, memory, dream, and history are the themes of Hiroji Sugimoto's photography. He often adds his thoughts to his photography.

from "Seaview, Seascapes", "Theatre, Theaters", "Architecture, Architecture", "Portrait, Portraits" to "Mathematical body: Mathematical Form", Hiroji Sugimoto has formed his unique photography style. His work is very calm, bleak picture, lifeless, giving a cold feeling, but it makes countless people stop in front of his work.

the sea is no longer the sea, architecture is not architecture, and his photography is more like a kind of exploration.

"I'm filming the history of things. In the Seaview series, I deal with water and the atmosphere. These two things can be said to be the least changed for people so far. Everything else in the world changes with time. The theme of my art is time. "

while filming the "Theatre" series, Hiroji Sugimoto went to one abandoned cinema after another, set up a camera to aim at the screen, and then put on a movie. When the film ends, the film story becomes a blank on the film because of the long exposure of the film, but the details of the falling corners in the dark cinema are engraved by time because of the long exposure.

We may not be able to understand what photographers are thinking, but through Hiroji Sugimoto's work, we can certainly arouse our thinking about the world, and isn't that the purpose of formal photography?

"Hiroji Sugimoto is one of the most respected photographers of our time. His important photography themes are the interpretation of art, history, science, and religion. He perfectly combines oriental philosophy with the purport of western culture. "

-the famous Has brand Photography Award comments on the 2001 winner, Hiroshi Sugimoto.

Theatre, Theaters series

one night, when I was taking pictures at the American Museum of Natural History, I suddenly had an idea. I asked myself, what would it be like to shoot a whole movie in one photo? I answered in my heart, you will get a glowing canvas. To realize this idea, I started the experiment right away. One afternoon I came to a cheap cinema in the east with a large frame camera. As soon as the movie began, I opened the aperture and pressed the shutter. Two hours later, at the end of the film, I closed the aperture and developed the negative that night, and the picture in my imagination suddenly appeared in front of me. " -Hiroji Sugimoto.

this is the source of inspiration for Hiroshi Sugimoto's famous photography "Cinema" series. In Hiroji Sugimoto's "Cinema" series, the center of each picture is a square, this regular square is a trace of a complete film, a tangible record of a certain period, but these traces of these times, they appear, exist, disappear, and finally turn into a blank. In the once lively cinema, at the end of a film, when the audience dispersed one after another, the conversation disappeared, the sound of crying and laughter disappeared, and the sound of footsteps disappeared. Quietly, the only thing that still exists is the screen that has played countless movies, the seats that still have a trace of body temperature, and everything that belongs to the cinema building, which witnesses the passage of time. Everything when he has experienced the erosion of time, the baptism of time, it will carry countless stories, and each story will obviously or not change the thing itself. And the cinema is such a place with countless stories, joyful or mournful stories on the screen, trivial joys, and sorrows under the screen when you sit quietly in the cinema after the show, do you also hear them whispering those stories?

"Architecture, Architecture" series

Architecture. In the early 20th century, the ideological trend of modernism impacted human thought and permeated all aspects of people's lives. Modernist design art first began in the field of architecture. The representatives of modernist architecture advocated getting rid of the shackles of traditional architectural forms and making full use of the technology and materials provided by industrialization to create new buildings suitable for new social conditions. Modernism boldly uses reinforced concrete, glass, and steel in building materials instead of traditional wood, stone, and tiles: it is designed to oppose any decoration and adopt simple geometric shapes. It has the obvious color of rationalism and radicalism, so it becomes "modernist architecture" again. Modernism begins with architectural design and brings its influence to industrial product design, environmental design, graphic design, and other fields. Under the impact of modernism, the old and new things have been replaced alternately, the previous ideas have been completely subverted, and society has undergone great changes. Which makes the people of this era in a confusing situation. In the whole group of photographic works, the buildings are located in the center of the picture, and the buildings photographed are all the architectural products of the boxy trend of industrialization. Regular geometric buildings, towering rectangular skyscrapers, black-and-white pictures without a trace of color, gray black-and-white shades, and soft-focusing photography techniques blur originally clear buildings. do you feel the invisible pressure brought about by the rapid development of industrial society, and your thoughts are impacted and changed just like these buildings, making it impossible to distinguish between true and false, right and wrong? Where is the real world that I thought it was? Why has the world become so blurred? Do you also feel confused and confused about the world?

"Seaview, Seascapes" series

Seaview's works present a variety of water shapes, which are also confusing with a simple composition: the horizon uniformly divides the sky and the water surface. Despite the title "Jamaica, the Caribbean", the photo does not have any geographical landmarks, just light, air, water, and atmosphere. In emphasizing these natural elements, Hiroji Sugimoto seems to hang his veil in front of reality, add ideas to tangible objects, and return the sea to its state of water and air. Despite the almost abstract and almost mysterious geometric composition, the relationship between yin and yang is constantly repeated from one picture to another, and from oceans to oceans all over the world, the sea has finally returned to the original state that human beings have never touched. Hiroshi Sugimoto's sea views are no longer pictures of the sea, they eventually become something rising from the dark past, a vision captured by a time machine that transcends our existence, and the substances of the sea, such as water and air, suggest the origin of our lives. Dialogue between

and Hiroshi Sugimoto

Preface concerning Hiroshi Sugimoto's works, the critic Shimimoto called it "the last modernist". Reviewing the perfect works such as "Theatre" and "Seaview", Hiroji Sugimoto is not only a master of modernism since du Xiang but also accurately conveys Japanese spirituality and aesthetics in photography.

compared with any other artist, Hiroji Sugimoto is conscious of the "margin of time" and is aware of the moment and eternity, constantly challenging the invisible concept of time with visible media such as photography. From his deep understanding of ancient art, explore how the beauty in time is expressed? Hiroji Sugimoto looks at time and beauty on the scale of time measured by non-contemporaries. . .

Hiroji Sugimoto's new book Talbot

while watching the History of History edited by Hiroji Sugimoto, Hiroji Sugimoto (hereinafter referred to as Sugimoto) and Toshio Goto (hereinafter referred to as Goto) conducted the following interview in July 2008.

. Goto: this is Newton's Principia bar, which centers on Sugimoto's collection and photography. Principia is Newton's 1687 book featuring Newtonian mechanics, which is a Sugimoto collection)

Sugimoto: yes, I bought the first edition at auction, which is the origin of differential and integral, from which I developed the mathematical model. This is Newton's Optics. Photography would not have existed without Newton. He was the first to discover the original color of the light...

Sugimoto: this book describes the production method of the daguerreotype, which was published immediately after the invention of photography, from which portrait photography began.

Goto: your collection may serve as the beginning of this interview, as was the case in the last solo exhibition "the end of time" at the Sen Art Museum. You symbolically placed a picture of du Xiang's big glassworks at the entrance of the exhibition. Du Xiang made large glass because he thought about the expression of the third and fourth dimensions, that is to say, as a projection of ideas, you also had the same idea. However, the only visual culture that respects vision is the history of art. therefore, du Xiang says, he hopes to bring more "knowledge" into art. But on the other hand, the counterattack against the history of art includes the later development of conceptual art, as well as the visual-centered development of photography.

Photography has developed for nearly 200 years, and it has quickly entered the era of digital photography instead of silver salt photography, which makes people rethink the "question of origin", that is, the essential question of "what photography is." the high performance of digital photography allows human beings to get images with higher resolution than the eyes, but at the same time relativizes what the human eyes see.

as represented by Cindy Sherman, photography of pure recording concept and performing art is brought into the field of contemporary art, photography is gradually "artistic", but your photography seems to set photography as an installation for ideas and images, and attempts to capture the essence of photography. . Just like this book History of History, it seems to most people that this is only a book shooting antique works, why can it represent contemporary art? You should be confused about it, but once you think about photography, most people will try to understand it by analyzing the history of painting, that is to say, you will build your series in a similar direction to reading history.

so, the views of the series that seem to be different in your work are consistent, and the same is true of the new Talbot. You get the paper film at that time and rinse it out again, but this is not only the return to the source but also seems to have captured the source? (laughter).

Sugimoto: if we had walked in the longitude and latitude of history, we would not have written such history if we had not created such works, so organizing a photographic history with our own hands is not because I can replace the photographic history by buying Talbot's paper film. Write down the period. Talbot is the work of Hiroshi Sugimoto reprinting Talbot's paper film. Most of Talbot's paper film is difficult to start within art museums. Sugimoto and an antique dealer in New York bought 15 copies of Talbot's paper film. I heard it took him nearly a year to sell his works. I think the History of Silver Salt Photography is over, and the negatives and emulsions will disappear, and under such circumstances, one day I will automatically stop writing. While thinking in this way, I think that digital photography should not be included in the "history of photography". The most important topic in photography since its invention is the credibility of credibility, that is, "what has been photographed has existed." but digital photography destroys this proposition, and therefore, the history of photography has come to an end, with a short life span of 180 years...

Goto: what you are doing is the origin of reply photography? Or fabricate the origin of photography? This is a rather blurred line, no! Or maybe it proves that there is no origin?

Sugimoto: yes, there is no "origin" for history. The origins are all sorted out later, so this is neither the origin of regeneration nor the origin of fabricating the history of photography. Like myths, they are things that don't exist originally.

Goto: so, "the history of history" is still creating the history of photography.

Sugimoto: that's right. The soft term is "combing history". When the curator of the Paul Getty Gallery saw the Talbot series, he said, "Let's have an exhibition here, too." So the Talbot series is produced again, and then the exhibition is scheduled to be held at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Now I have a collection of Paul Getty Art Museum, Metropolitan Museum, and myself.

Hiroshi Sugimoto's new book Lighting Fields

Goto: to some extent, you are still a du elephant, I think because you want to know "what exactly is photography?" (translation Note)

Hiroshi Sugimoto's new Lightning Fields

Goto: to some extent, you are still a du elephant, I think because you want to know "what exactly is photography?" That's why we keep photographing contemporary art, with different series and different systems, but this is the only one we pursue. I think people in the world will be surprised to see your latest work Lighting Fields, which has gone beyond the meaning of negatives and images in photography.

Sugimoto: you can take pictures without cameras and lenses. The result is that Talbot doesn't need cameras and lenses. Talbot has devoted his whole life to photography. I wonder what it would be like if he and Michael Faraday (, a 19th-century British scientist who discovered the laws of electrical decomposition and electromagnetic induction, and Talbot co-studied photography, could invent more photography techniques. . There is only one history, and there are too many choices that don't happen. I'm just trying to use them. The important thing about. (Lighting Fields) is that it is not because the image is beautiful, but because the phenomenon itself is beautiful. At the moment of perceiving beauty, it seems that there is some attractive magic latent in it. The so-called beauty is a sign rather than a signal...

Goto: so most of the works of art you choose and prefer are works that can't be seen by the artist because if you break away from the situation of who made it, you can get closer to the true beauty.

Sugimoto: yes.

how long does it take to make Goto: Lighting Fields?

Sugimoto: about 3 years, experienced numerous experiments, the experimental results are about 3 major folders. The situation of Discharge is related to the temperature, temperature, and indoor and outdoor temperature difference of the day. When making Lighting Fields, you need to wear black glasses, and you can feel the profundity of this unknown world. although the result is simple, it is very esoteric.

Goto: Lighting Fields is very beautiful, such as blood vessels, leaf veins, and other naturally generated shapes. Is it Discharge on the photo board?

Sugimoto: that's right. Electricity is turned on with electrodes in the darkroom, and the machine is like a machine that induces lightning.

Goto: are these unique originals?

Sugimoto: it will be distinguished according to the situation of the exhibition. Lighting Fields uses Lith film, as the normal table size. Some of the displays use Lith film itself, and then several of them are scheduled to be made into 8x10 negatives, and then put into a series of large pieces of photographic paper...

end of photography

Goto: silver salt photography is over, history is over, time is over. This is not just emotional, it seems to have lost all sense of indifference.

Sugimoto: this is the foundation of Japanese literature and Japanese aesthetic consciousness. In such a sense of loneliness, digital photography is only a flashy moment, and the emptiness is short-lived. The digital image is stored on the hard drive, but it only takes a powerful magnet to eliminate it. Intelligence is not a solid thing, and the human mind is stronger than the human mind, while digital photography uses inkjet prints, chemical surfaces, and hand-washed silver salt surfaces, which are overwhelmingly different in the sense of physical existence. Photography has entered the digital age as a torrent of history. As far as I am concerned, current works also need to be transformed into digital times. therefore, for the next generation, it is very important to teach them how to use the characteristics of this medium artistically. duties, I think it's great that I was born in the era of silver salt photography.