Hiroshi Sugimoto (1948-) is a multidisciplinary contemporary artist. Active in the field of architecture—most notably with the Enoura Observatory in Odawara—he has also staged classical Japanese performing arts in Europe, the United States and Japan. Calligraphy, ceramics, waka poetry, cooking—his range is extensive. However, the point of origin for all Sugimoto’s art is gelatin silver photography. Based on rigorous conceptual thinking and originality of expression, Sugimoto’s photographic works stand at the very pinnacle of gelatin silver technique. But now, as film makes way for digital, the gelatin silver process itself is endangered and at real risk of “extinction.”

This exhibition will feature approximately 60 gelatin silver photographs from Sugimoto’s early days in the late 1970s all the way up to the present day. It is the large-scale solo exhibition of Sugimoto’s photographs to be held in Japan since his 2005 exhibition at the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo.

A satellite exhibition featuring all of Sugimoto’s works from the museum’s own collection along with the Sugimoto Notebooks1 which reveal the secrets of his process, will be held in parallel in the MOMAT Collection Gallery on the museum’s third floor.

Notes

1 The Sugimoto Notebooks are notebooks with jottings covering the processes for the photographing and developing of Sugimoto’s works. The earliest notebooks date from the latter half of the 1970s.