Hiroshi Sugimoto: Still Life, Pace London

Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto is known for his stylized images of vast oceans, ice flows and flashes of electrical energy. And it was only earlier this year that Sugimoto crashed a meteor into the galleries of Palais de Tokyo, Paris in his exhibition Aujourd’hui, le monde est mort. In this new exhibition at Pace Gallery London the Hiroshi Sugimoto seascapes and lightning fields that you might recognise are replaced with 17 new large-scale photographs from the ongoing diorama series.
Hiroshi Sugimoto: Pace Gallery exhibition
Documenting the natural world through the eye of the museum, the Hiroshi Sugimoto dioramas present a vision of the earth which is carefully constructed and contained within the photographic frame. The crisp black and white surface of these images adds to the feeling of artifice, in which the wilderness of nature is almost bottled for our appreciation. Much like fossils, these images are crystalized moments in history which no longer exist. These ideas of memory and preservation are central to Sugimoto’s work, as he explains, ‘I long to know where that history came from and where it is going’.
Hiroshi Sugimoto photography highlights
Look out for Polar Bear (1976), the first in this series of diorama images which Sugimoto took at the American Museum of Natural History, New York. In this constructed world Sugimoto finds ‘the only thing absent is life itself. Time comes to a halt and never-ending stillness reigns’. Delighting in the lifelessness of this scene and its false reality, Sugimoto allows new life to be born as these images are given a new purpose.
Photography lovers will be fascinated by Sugimoto’s practice which uses specific lighting and extended exposures lasting up to twenty minutes. And in their large scale format, these images are undeniably engaging.