Customer Reviews

Hiroshi Sugimoto

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you have never seen Sugimoto's work and you have an interest in conceptual art and photography, you are in for a treat. As he says, his work is all about time and what better way to show time than through a photograph. Beautifully produced, this book hints at the depth of the original large format images that can now be seen at a retrospective at San Francisco's de Young museum.

The book begins with his portraits in a wax museum and dioramas from New York's Museum of Natural History. All of his photographs are made with large format camera and the detail is exquisite. Conceptually, the camera gazes upon reproduction figures that are perhaps better than life itself, arranged like sculpture. The meaning of these objects (and places) becomes a recurring theme in his work that ultimately questions the medium itself. Real fiction.

The highlight of the book in my estimation are the minimalist sea landscapes that capture light and question time -- they are devoid of a decisive moment. These images are absolutely spellbinding in person and, for a book, the reproduction is very good.

The weakest part are photographs made by Sugimoto of blurred buildings, which take on a toy like scale, again questioning the reality of the original object. The selection of which building is clearly important, but the execution just isn't as exciting or masterful as the other work in this book. This is a very difficult area and very few photographers have pulled it off (try David Armstrong: All Day Every Day also available at Amazon)

Conceptually, the mathematical models, created in the late 1800's and early 1900's are fascinating. The ultra-resolution of the view camera shows the human hand in creation, where slight imperfections cast shadows of scratches made by the makers, as well as students and teachers. The poetry of pure math meets visual realism.

The finale are the photographs of movie theaters, each image exposed for the duration of the movie. The screen is a brilliant white (hinting at the experience of light from a movie), pouring out into the architecture of the theater or the surroundings of the drive-in landscaping. One of my favorites, from Union City, California, shows traces of light in the sky from passing aircraft -- a Zen-like experience of the passing of time that hints at an ancient haiku about the traces left by geese on snow.

I first saw this book at the de Young Museum in San Francisco during a major exhibition of Sugimoto's work there during the summer of 2007. I love photography and have been building up a library of photo books for years. Sugimoto is one of my favorite artists and I was really looking forward to having a book of his work (there are so few that have been published that are available).

I think the book is a really good survey of Sugimoto, but I have to say that I was extremely perplexed and disappointed by the decision of the publisher and the artist to publish the work in such a small format. If you've ever seen any of Sugimoto's prints, they are on the order of 4 feet by 5 feet and larger. Their size is important to the presence of the work and highlights the incredible detail that can be captured by a committed artist using very large format cameras. The prints reproduced in the book are just too small to be able to capture any of this impact.

This really drops the rating for me. if it had been twice or three times the dimensions as published it would have just been big enough.

This is a fantastic book and make sure you get the expanded 2nd edition since it adds 32 extra pages of new work not included in the 1st edition published back in 2005. This makes the 2nd edition the most complete collection of Sugimoto's work available. The printing is top quality and the binding strong--this is a quality publication and highly recommended.

This is a great book of photographs, representing well Sugimoto's work over time. Printing quality and bounding are sublime. However, as other reviewer mentioned, the book's format is relatively small. To fully appreciate Sugimoto's work, it needs to be viewed in full scale, but with over 300 pages, that is almost impossible. With a hard cover, the book is already heavy and voluminous in its present format.
A few words that come in mind when viewing Sugimoto's work: Japanese aesthetics, minimalism, intellectual, somewhat cold, static and precise. I am a fan of such work, but if you prefer emotional drama, look elsewhere.
Overall a great addition to one's photobooks library.