Hiroshi Sugimoto i Berlin

En retrospektiv utstilling med bilder tatt av den japanske fotografen Hiroshi Sugimoto ble nylig avsluttet ved Neue Nationalgalerie i Berlin. Sugimoto jobber utelukkende med storformat og i sort hvitt, noe som resulterer i store kopier med briljant kvalitet.



Rent visuelt var utstillingen en nytelse, men det er ikke først og fremst dette som gjør Sugimotos arbeider interessante. Flere av bildeseriene har blitt til som et resultat av en tenkning rundt konsepter, som så omsettes til konkrete tekniske grep. Et slikt eksempel er serien "Theatres"

The question-and-answer session that led up to this vision went something like this: Suppose you shoot a whole movie in a single frame? And the answer: You get a shining screen. Immediately I sprang into action, experimenting toward realizing this vision. Dressed up as a tourist, I walked into a cheap cinema in the East Village with a large-format camera. As soon as the movie started, I fixed the shutter at a wide-open aperture, and two hours later when the movie finished, I clicked the shutter closed. That evening, I developed the film, and the vision exploded behind my eyes.

Et annet eksempel er "Seascapes":

Water and air. So very commonplace are these substances, they hardly attract attention—and yet they vouchsafe our very existence.

The beginnings of life are shrouded in myth: Let there water and air. Living phenomena spontaneously generated from water and air in the presence of light, though that could just as easily suggest random coincidence as a Deity. Let's just say that there happened to be a planet with water and air in our solar system, and moreover at precisely the right distance from the sun for the temperatures required to coax forth life. While hardly inconceivable that at least one such planet should exist in the vast reaches of universe, we search in vain for another similar example.

Mystery of mysteries, water and air are right there before us in the sea. Every time I view the sea, I feel a calming sense of security, as if visiting my ancestral home; I embark on a voyage of seeing.