Hiroshi Sugimoto Research Paper

Kevin Nguyen

Chrysta Giffen

Photo 40

Hiroshi Sugimoto Hiroshi Sugimoto is known for his concept of time and surrealism in his photographs. Sugimoto wanted to express his art through photography because he believed in preserving art. That is why you will notice some reference to history through his photographs. He was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1948. Before becoming a photographer, he was a student who studied in philosophy and Marxist economics in Tokyo. He graduated from Saint Paul’s University in 1970. After graduating he moved to the United States to learn photography. In an article The Test of Time: Hiroshi Sugimoto on art that endures written by Hiroshi Sugimoto stated that he didn’t have an artistic perspective while he lived in Japan.

He stated that the best way for him to learn was by buying objects and touching them rather than reading history textbooks. Sugimoto believed that art can last time but different mediums represent that time. In 1974, he graduated from Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles where he first studied photography: soon after he moved to New York. During his time in New York, “shoot-from-the-hip style” of street photography was dominant however Sugimoto was against this, he was more into “the photographer and the camera with the world beyond the lens.” This was his style and he wanted to emphasis on it. He particularly liked old pieces because they survived time and represented people in that time. He made several series over the years but the ones I will cover are: his series Theaters, his

The exhibit is located in the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. According to the article, the series brings together his concept of dioramas, portraits, and photogenic drawings. For his concept of dioramas he took photos of wax animals in the American Museum of Natural History that seemed like they were wildlife photographs. Wax Portraits (1999) is another series where he took photographs of wax figures of Henry VIII and his wives. This series brought the concept of portrait. The photos themselves look like accurate self portraits because of the wax figures mimicking the figures. In 2007 he took photographs of nineteenth-century drawings from William Henry Fox Talbot. “A photographer never makes an actual subject; they just steal the image from the world.” Sugimoto wanted to emphasis this because he wants to give credit to the subject themselves, he wanted his audience to know that the pictures he took are memories of the past. “…a time machine, in a way, to preserve the memory, to preserve time.” These images of old figures or inventions showed his concept that photography was an art that doesn’t create a subject but bring it to