Polar Bear

Hiroshi Sugimoto (b.1948) is a multidisciplinary artist, who is best known for his photography and architecture. Sugimoto’s photographic exhibitions double as art installations, and are described by the artist as ‘space sculpture’. [1] Throughout his career, Sugimoto has used the camera to investigate the passage of time and to raise questions about the nature of perceived ‘reality’. For Sugimoto, the camera is a time-recording device and ‘photography functions as a fossilization of time’. [2]

This black and white photograph titled Polar Bear is from Sugimoto’s Dioramas series. Taken in 1976, the photograph was reproduced for The Origins of Love portfolio in 2004. The inclusion of Polar Bear in the portfolio draws the viewer’s attention to the vulnerability of this endangered species, whose numbers are threatened by loss of habitation caused by climate change.

Sugimoto began his Dioramas series in 1976 and explored this theme over four decades. Responding to the artificial displays at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, in this series Sugimoto uses photography to invest a museum’s taxidermy animals and plastic scenery with a vitality and authenticity that they do not possess in real life.

“When I first arrived in New York in 1974, I visited many of the city’s tourist sites, one of which was the American Museum of Natural History. I made a curious discovery while looking at the exhibition of animal dioramas: the stuffed animals positioned before painted backdrops looked utterly fake, yet by taking a quick peek with one eye closed, all perspective vanished, and suddenly they looked very real. I had found a way to see the world as a camera does. However fake the subject, once photographed, it’s as good as real.” [3]

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