Nobuyoshi Araki

Hiroshi Sugimoto is revered for his iconic black and white photographs of subject matter including museum dioramas, drive-in theatres, seascapes and architecture. In his serial work Sugimoto addresses notions of temporality, perception versus reality, the transience of life,andthefundamentalelementsthatmakeupthenaturalworld,namelywaterandlight. In1978, Sugimoto began his Theatres series, setting up a large format camera on a tripod at classic American movie theatres and drive-ins, leaving the camera shutter open for the duration of a film, the projector light on the screen creating a hauntingly overexposed central element in his work and revealing distinctarchitecturaldetailsofthedarktheatre. TheseworksallowSugimototoexpressthepassage of time through a single image and exploit the possibilities of working with black and white film and an unconventional light source. In 1980, Sugimoto embarked on his Seascapes series, in which he fastidiously captured the convergence of sea and sky at different times of day, under varying atmospheric conditions, around the world. While the composition of the photographs is starkly consistent: sea, horizon line and air, the elements of time and light create endless pictorial arrangements in this meditative and sublime series. Unlike Araki’s highly autobiographical and unapologetically explicit works, Sugimoto’s meticulous compositions are devoid of human presence and suggestive of the supernatural.