Between Sea and Sky (video 13:12)

Hiroshi Sugimoto
Japanese, 1948-

Mediterranean Sea, La Ciotat, 1991-1992
offset lithographs in a hinged metal box
9 1/2 × 12 1/2 in.

SBMA, Gift of Carol Vernon and Robert Turbin in memory of Marjorie and Leonard Vernon
2022.1.34



Hiroshi Sugimoto - photo © New York Daily News

“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 be 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.” - Hiroshi Sugimoto - www.sugimotohiroshi.com/seascapes-1

COMMENTS

Hiroshi Sugimoto's work has achieved widespread recognition for its exploration of abstract concepts, such as time, vision and belief, through meticulously balanced images that encourage prolonged attention and serve to focus audience consideration on the ways in which humanity makes sense of itself. He was heavily influenced by his involvement with New York's Minimal and Conceptual art scenes in the late 1970s and the degree to which he used the camera as a means of engaging with ideas played a significant role in expanding photography beyond documentary uses. His best-known series draw heavily upon repetition, unifying disparate locations through shared compositions, and are characterized by use of long exposures, black and white film, and analog processes …

The Seascapes series (1980 - present) continues Sugimoto's investigation of time in relation to history and to photography itself. Ligurian Sea, Saviore shows water and air bisected by the horizon, captured in black and white in a long exposure. The image offers no trace of the vantage point from which the photograph was taken, leading the viewer to feel as if they are suspended, floating, between sea and sky. Sugimoto's Seascapes are all composed in this manner, drawing upon the horizon as a point of orientation across cultures and across time. The format serves to unify disparate locations, positioning the sea as at once universal and singular; each image conforms to a type that allows specificity. In Ligurian Sea, Saviore, the sea and sky appear indistinct, as if enveloped in fog, with only close scrutiny revealing the darker grey of the horizon line and a hint of the ripples of the water in the foreground.

Seascapes is deeply conceptual and Sugimoto has written that this work comes out of his understanding of the ocean as an expanse that has lasted through millennia, connecting us with a past that precedes recorded history, and his contemplation of the ways in which a camera can capture what the eye cannot. In the images, which are created with exposures of between 1/30 of a second and several hours, time serves to abstract the landscape, and the only indication of a human presence is in the names that the images are given, which act as a record of the ways in which people make sense of the ineffable through concepts such as naming. The photographs from this series are usually displayed in groups of three, further emphasizing the universality of the ocean.

https://www.theartstory.org/artist/sugimoto-hiroshi/


SBMA CURATORIAL LABELS

These mesmerizing photo-lithographs embody Hiroshi Sugimoto’s decades-long vision of seascapes around the world. With equal parts sky and ocean, Sugimoto, one of Japan's most revered artists, captures a real place that nonetheless hovers abstractly just beyond the realm of recognition. The works in this gallery are 12 of 50 from “'Time Exposed,” a 1991 portfolio produced to benefit the renowned Camegie lntemational exhibition. This poetic title alludes to the medium of photography's ability to make visible a specific moment in time within the infinity of time itself.

- A Time of Gifts, 2022