| ART:21: |
Is your photography
process straightforward? Do you use any special techniques?
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| SUGIMOTO: |
Special techniques? Well, this
is my studio in the Chelsea area of New York. I am on the
eleventh floor facing the north sky. This is like a very
traditional nineteenth-century painter’s studio in
Paris: a brownstone building, the painter usually takes the
top floor facing north so you never get the direct sunlight
but the beautiful reflection of the sky. I am not using any
artificial light here. All I am doing is shading up and down—and
then I can control the light so that I don’t have to
be afraid of a New York City blackout.
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| ART:21: |
The way you’re shooting,
is it analogous to early photography?
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| SUGIMOTO: |
Yes, the earliest photography—probably
nineteenth-century style or early-twentieth century. People
used to use very big format cameras. And to me this method
still makes the best quality picture. We think we keep making
inventions and tools as sophisticated. This system, it’s
very hard to control, but it still makes the best picture.
I am sticking to the traditional method.
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| ART:21: |
Why is it hard to control?
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| SUGIMOTO: |
People used to use very simple
things. Even this meter—there is no battery involved—a
very simple method. People used to feel the light and how
the light affected the surface of the object. The sky, lights
from the window are constantly changing every second, every
minute. So you really had to guess what was going to happen.
You had to develop your own sense of the best balance of
F-stop and shutter speed. I trained myself very well spending
thirty years doing this. So the machine cannot measure some
things, very intimate factors. What the early photographer
gained from the study of nature, now people tend to rely
on the computer or machines for. That’s not good enough.
You need something more than that.
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| ART:21: |
Talk about the way you print
your photographs.
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| SUGIMOTO: |
I developed my own style of
printing. I tested many different methods—Walker Evans’s
method, Ansel Adams’s method. They used different kinds
of formulas and chemicals. I spent quite a lot of time studying
chemicals and how to develop large-format negatives. I also
developed a sense to adjust the negatives. What kind of gray
tone creates these nice gray tones? And what level of grayness
makes black tones, not losing the medium tones, but extremely
deep black? And then, highlights should be interesting but
never washed out. There’s no pure white; there are
always some tones there. Even in the deepest shadow, there’s
a tone which is possible to print on the silver surface,
but not in a catalogue. So this is about studying the silver
reactions—and the colors of the metal as silver, and
the surface of ink tones. The colors of the metal...silver
metal, silver colors. That makes the tones of the images
so rich. I’m a great fan of this process and the colors
of silver—how to make as fine tones as possible, as
a silver-print maker. So in that sense I am a very craft-oriented
person.
But at the same time, I want to make something artistic and
conceptual.
In general, you know, the post-modern artist never paid attention
to craftsmanship. That’s something
like a nineteenth-century cliché. But to me, I’m
going the other way around. I really respect my craftsmanship
and my hands. So even though I’ve lived in this postmodern
time, I probably call myself a postmodern-experienced pre-postmodern
modernist!
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| ART:21: |
What have you been photographing
today your studio?
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| SUGIMOTO: |
This is one of my fossil collections.
Years ago, under the water, this kind of life formation was
made. This fossil was discovered in Russia. This horn is
so rare to have as a complete piece. This was in a rock,
kept heated, then dipped in the water. This crack separated
and then this fossil shape appeared. The person who discovered
it very carefully worked on this part to save this horn.
It’s quite an interesting piece.
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| ART:21: |
How old is it?
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| SUGIMOTO: |
Four-hundred-fifty million years
old. I feel very young!
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| ART:21: |
Are there similarities between
fossils and photography?
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| SUGIMOTO: |
Fossils work almost the same
way as photography...as a record of history. The accumulation
of time and history becomes a negative of the image. And
this negative comes off, and the fossil is the positive side.
This is the same as the action of photography. So that’s
why I am very curious about the artistic stage of imprinting
the memories of the time record. A fossil is made over four-hundred-fifty
million years—it takes that much time. But photography,
it’s instant. So, to me, photography functions as a
fossilization of time.
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| ART:21: |
Does this relate to your "Seascapes"
series?
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| SUGIMOTO: |
Not directly but indirectly—in
dealing with this concept of time and history. In "Seascapes,"
my subject matter is water and air.
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| ART:21: |
What about the stillness in
those photographs?
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| SUGIMOTO: |
Stillness...I’m
not intentionally promoting it, but most people see it, and
it’s very quiet and serene. That’s something
that just naturally, automatically comes out through my work.
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| ART:21: |
Can you say a little about this
cabinet in your studio?
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| SUGIMOTO: |
This cabinet I call my portable
Shinto shrine. The Japanese Shinto shrine—they always keep
the mirror inside. That’s probably the reflection of
the old memory, ancestors. And you know, worshipping our
ancestors, this is the earliest stage of life formation in
the world. This is what I have to pay respect to.
I was commissioned to build a Shinto shrine in Japan. So
I studied the history of Japanese religion, especially Shintoism.
I found that it’s very serious to pay attention to
ancestors, how you worship your ancestors, and then also
the old memories and families—the origin of families, the
origin of life itself. So this is the most radical presentation
of how we should pay attention to the ancestors.
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| ART:21: |
You’ve also explored architecture
as a theme in photography.
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| SUGIMOTO: |
Yes, this gave me a good education
over the last seven, eight years. I’ve been visiting
famous modernist architecture.
This guided me to this kind of mixture of architecture, sculpture,
and photography.
When I was working on the architecture series I was actually
photographing huge-scale architecture looking up from the
ground level. I wanted to transfer this sense of seeing the
building from the ground floor...It’s presenting some
kind of taste and sense of the early-twentieth century.
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| ART:21: |
Has Minimalism affected
your work any?
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| SUGIMOTO: |
I’ve known Walter De Maria—personally
and not so personally—for a long time. When I first
moved to New York City in 1974 there was a series of Minimalist
shows—including Walter De Maria and later the Dia permanent
installation, "The Broken Kilomter." So I think
that experience of the minimalist movement in New York in
the ’70s
gave me a very strong impression.
I always felt that as a
photographer I tried to stay as minimalist as possible, but
some day I wanted to have sculpture experience. At the same
time I did a series of 1,000 Buddhas in Kyoto Temple—this
kind of installation similar to a twelfth century Japanese
temple. So even before New York minimalism, the Japanese
did it already in the twelfth century. So I don’t owe
anything to New York, I think.
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