SUGIMOTO Hiroshi is a photographer working at the forefront of contemporary art, yet at the core of his practice lies a persistent commitment to printmaking thought and the accumulation of time. He does not regard photography as a mere recording device, but rather as a form of printmaking in which traces of light are inscribed into the material substance of silver halide. In recent years, he has also become directly and deeply engaged in printmaking itself.
The quality of printmaking in Sugimoto’s art is most powerfully embodied in the extreme stillness of his landmark Seascapes series. By photographing seas around the world in an identical composition—always bisected by the horizon—he performs an act akin to the printmaking process of layering impressions to achieve uniform tonal gradations. For Sugimoto, photography is a “print of light” produced through the apparatus of the camera, a medium in which humanity’s universal memories, stretching back to antiquity, are fixed.
Drawing on his profound knowledge of optical glass, architecture, and classical art, Sugimoto has also reconstructed his photographic works using traditional printmaking techniques such as photogravure. Through this process, he achieves a weighty, immersive black that seeps into the very fibers of the paper—an intensity and material presence impossible to reproduce digitally. His choice of this method stems from the fact that it is, fundamentally, an act of creating fossils of time.
In his more recent activities, alongside architectural projects such as the Enoura Observatory, Sugimoto has pursued a “photographic plate–making” approach exemplified by the Lightning Fields series, in which electrical discharges are applied directly onto film without the use of a camera. This practice moves beyond the conventional boundaries of photography, returning instead to a primordial printmaking spirit—one that transfers the raw energies of nature directly onto paper.
The quality of printmaking in Sugimoto’s art is most powerfully embodied in the extreme stillness of his landmark Seascapes series. By photographing seas around the world in an identical composition—always bisected by the horizon—he performs an act akin to the printmaking process of layering impressions to achieve uniform tonal gradations. For Sugimoto, photography is a “print of light” produced through the apparatus of the camera, a medium in which humanity’s universal memories, stretching back to antiquity, are fixed.
Drawing on his profound knowledge of optical glass, architecture, and classical art, Sugimoto has also reconstructed his photographic works using traditional printmaking techniques such as photogravure. Through this process, he achieves a weighty, immersive black that seeps into the very fibers of the paper—an intensity and material presence impossible to reproduce digitally. His choice of this method stems from the fact that it is, fundamentally, an act of creating fossils of time.
In his more recent activities, alongside architectural projects such as the Enoura Observatory, Sugimoto has pursued a “photographic plate–making” approach exemplified by the Lightning Fields series, in which electrical discharges are applied directly onto film without the use of a camera. This practice moves beyond the conventional boundaries of photography, returning instead to a primordial printmaking spirit—one that transfers the raw energies of nature directly onto paper.
