Hiroshi Sugimoto's images freeze time and space, revealing the workings of our own vision, slowing down the act of perception long enough that it becomes a palpable component of his work. His earliest photographs were images of decadent movie palaces built in the 1920s and 1930s. By timing the exposure of his photos to the exact length of the film being screened, he produced images that depict theater interiors bathed in the magical glare of an all-white screen: pure light. Next Sugimoto began a body of work that he continues to this day, photographing views of the sea from land, traveling around the world to make pictures that, despite their vastly different geographic origins, seem at first to be the same, with only slight variations. Their captions, however, confirm that each is of a different body of water: Caspian, Ligurian, Black. Other series include his out-of-focus impressions of landmark architectural monuments, wherein the Empire State Building, Le Corbusier's Chapel de Notre Dame du Haut, and Tadao Ando's Church of Light in Osaka, among others, are essentialized rather than documented. This volume presents a monographic retrospective of Hiroshi Sugimoto's complete body of work, including the projects described above and others. New, mostly unpublished images from his recent color work are featured: impressions of the impeccably proportioned shrine Sugimoto designed in Naoshima Island in Japan, as well as a series entitled Colors of Shadow. Specially commissioned essays by photography curators David Elliot and Kerry Brougher examine Sugimoto's work in depth, while an exhibition history and bibliography round out the volume.
