From Our Archives: Hiroshi Sugimoto
U.A.Play House, New York, 1978
This interview originally appeared in Issue 22: Impact
Andrea Blanch: When I first saw the Theaters series, it had such an effect on me. The white light was so striking and so blinding. I’ve read that you deal with concepts of life and death in your work. How do you think your audience reacts to or interprets your use of light?
Hiroshi Sugimoto: It's a light from the afterlife. Without knowing about how these images were made, people react to it. When light is coming out from some small space, it's very abstract in a way—kind of suggesting a religious kind of vision.
Andrea: Similar to when you die, you go into the light. Then I found out how you did it, the technique you used, which is even more impressive. I wanted to know—did you choose the movies before you chose the architecture?
Sugimoto: When I started in 1976, I didn't have the power to choose the movie. I just stepped into the theater. In the very early stages, I didn’t even get permission to go in. I just explored whatever was being shown there, the feature film.
Andrea: And where did you get that inspiration for that? To leave the shutter open for that long?
Sugimoto: One night, this came out of my noodle. I just envisioned it. What if I exposed the entire film? The answer is just light coming out from the movie screen. So I always envision some image first, and then I go out to find it. To prove it, I have to make a photo, manifesting my original vision.
Franklin Park Theater, Boston, 2015
Andrea: You're very experimental. Do you ever think about experimenting with digital cameras?
Sugimoto: Digital? I was lucky that I was born before the digital time. It makes everything so easy. But my effort in the 1970s was totally different. So now I can use a digital camera, of course. But why bother? I can do it even better in analog, especially black and white.
Andrea: Why do you always shoot in black and white?
Sugimoto: Black-and-white has beautiful tonality, from pitch black to white white. So many different nuances and grayscales. It's an uncomfortable state of clarity. To me, it's more challenging than color film. Now finally, I'm working a little with color using digital. Color is closer to reality, but black-and-white is more technically challenging. Very few other people work in black and white, so I think it's worth keeping this technique alive for the next generation.
Andrea: So you studied philosophy and sociology—what brought you to the arts and to the United States?
Sugimoto: I was a very good self-trained photographer, aside from my study of philosophy. Without any very strong intention of leaving Japan for America, it just happened. My parents said, "You do whatever you want to do." My family had a business, and my parents probably worried that “this kid is not good for the family business.” My younger brother was serious enough, I wasn't so serious.
The Empire of Light II, Rene, Magritte, 2014
Andrea: But then you said in 1974, after moving to New York, you found how serious art can be. How and why?
Sugimoto: As a photographer, I thought the only way to pay for myself was to be a commercial photographer, a fashion photographer or something similar, in the age of Avedon. So in the first stage of my career, I set out to become a commercial photographer. I worked as several photographers' assistants, and I didn't enjoy that at all. I did a JCPenney catalog shooting—it was awful [laughs]. And then I encountered some minimalist gallery shows, which interested me. The visions of these artists were not straightforward. They had this new kind of presentation, and I shared this new feeling, so I fit myself into the field.
Andrea: How did you segue from JCPenney to Dan Flavin? Do you remember what your first series was?
Sugimoto: My first series was Diorama. Before I began the project, I wondered to myself which medium to use, considering painting and sculpture. But I had trained myself as a photographer and believed that photography could be adaptable to this new field of art. Photography had been considered a second-class citizen of the art field.
Andrea: True.
Sugimoto: So my effort was to make this second-class status into a first-class citizen.
Andrea: Well done.
Sugimoto: [Laughs] I think I did it well.
Tall Figure, III, Alberto Giacometti, 2013
Andrea: How did you come to architecture?
Sugimoto: Architecture? That was not my intention at all. Something always happens that forces me to do it. My first architecture project was in 2002, Naoshima Island, Benesse Hotel. Mr. Fukutake asked me to redesign the old shrine, and then I did. That's how it started. People liked it, and others started asking me, "Oh, will you do this gallery design, this house design?" I never had the intention to be a professional architect. It was because of the people's request. I do anything by request [laughs].
Andrea: Why did they come to you? What did they see about you or your work that led them to ask you to design a gallery?
Sugimoto: People find some kind of uniqueness of my design and simply this Japanese kind of sensitivity of space. I just never said no. I used to be an antique dealer for 10 years, which paid my rent for a while. In 1995, I was given my first museum show at The Met, and my art started selling. And then, ever since, I have had so many museum shows, one or two every year. I would work on the floorplan, thinking about how to design my show within the Fraenkel Gallery or Bilbao or many other awkward spaces. I trained myself.
Andrea: Well, one thing that I find remarkable is that you opened up an architectural firm without a license. So I imagine that you create designs, and others do the detail work to make your designs architecturally sound.
Sugimoto: I have a professional structure engineer, of course. I have 10 people working for me in Japan. Six of them are all licensed. I have given up on taking an official architecture test for my license—I’m too old [laughs].
Ligurian Sea, Saviore, 1993
Andrea: Some people have said that your work is mournful. What do you think about that? You did say when you had your show in Paris, "Imagining the worst-conceivable tomorrow gives me tremendous pleasure at the artistic level. The darkness of my future lights up my present." I thought that was great.
Sugimoto: That is a very cynical statement.
Andrea: Yes, and it's very poetic. I think your work is poetic in the truest sense of the word. How is this reflected in the upcoming show?
Sugimoto: I think art is a commodity now. The ghostly figures in the work represent the end of spiritual life and the change to a commercial presence. People buy art for capital, not beauty. The issue of beauty is a very small percentage of consideration in art these days. At the same time, I think that people still believe in a future with beauty. I address that kind of sense, believing in the future, in my work.
To read more, check out our 22nd Issue: Impact
