Hiroshi Sugimoto: The First Encounter Italy through eyes of Hiroshi Sugimoto and Tenshō Embassy

Hiroshi Sugimoto is considered to be one of the most acclaimed and respected of modern artists. From the Seventies to the present day the artist has produced a body of highly recognisable photographs – silent images with a predilection for the essential, snatched from the flow of time, that catch the eye as archetypes of a civilisation still pervaded by a sense of eternity. The “The first encounter” that Sugimoto presents in the exhibition spaces of San Gimignano sets out from the interiors of several historic cinemas, including those of Florence, Siena, Mantua and Ferrara – places of remembering par excellence, where collective experience multiplies and explodes in individual memories – and ultimately retraces in part the Italian stops along a famous journey, that of the “quattro ragazzi” (four young men), known also as the Tenshō Embassy (Tenshō ken’Ō shōnen shisetsu, literally “European mission of the men of the Tenshō era).