Hiroshi Sugimoto

 Hiroshi Sugimoto is a Japanese Photographer who works primarily in black and white/analog photography. He is most well known for his long exposures in movie theatres, as well as his series "Seascapes." Today I will be focusing more on his work from Seascapes, and his self portraits as I've already covered Sugimoto's long exposure theatre work a while ago.

This first image by Sugimoto relates to his work in the theatres with long exposure. He looks to have made himself a viewer, captivated by whatever is going on on the screen. Sugimoto's use of heavy reflection makes me feel like he is interpreting himself as a character from his long exposure works. Capturing a proper negative for this image must have been rather difficult, as well as making a good print for it too. I'm curious how much of this image was due to how the negative was created, and how much of it is heavy darkroom work. Most of the image is very underexposed besides his face, clearly doing what a portrait is supposed to, highlight the subject's face.

Sugimoto's next work, "Polar Bear." made in 1976 looks like a far out landscape in the arctic. In reality, its just at the American Museum of Natural History. Still, with the haziness of the background and the convincing looking models, Sugimoto makes a rather convincing display out of some statues, or as he described them "stuffed animals." The bear's white fur is exposed to the point where there's enough contrast to separate it from the rest of the image. I'd imagine the stuffed polar bear model wasn't actual that grey, but my best guess says that this is due to Sugimoto's darkroom work.

This last image is from Sugimoto's conceptual forms series. The capturing of the spiral shape really intrigues me. The thing I am curious the most about is where this image was actually taken. Possibly at night with studio illumination? Or is this object small enough to fit in a studio? It could also be something to do with heavy darkroom work, but something tells me Sugimoto knew what he was going for here, even before having a negative.