Sea of Japan, Hokkaido 1

Hiroshi Sugimoto (b.1948) is a multidisciplinary artist, who is best known for his photography and architecture. 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, ‘photography functions as a fossilization of time’. [1]

This silver gelatin print from Sugimoto’s enigmatic Seascapes series is titled Sea of Japan: Hokkaido 1 (1986). Beginning in the 1980s, Sugimoto embarked on an ambitious project to document the rhythmic waves and glacial stillness of bodies of water at various locations around the world. To capture the rippling motion of the waves, Sugimoto used a large format 8 x 10 inch camera set to a slow shutter speed for a lengthened period of exposure. All images from this series were taken from the shore. In Seascapes, the artist offers the viewer a sublime encounter with elemental nature, which transcends geographic and cultural boundaries.

In each photograph, a horizon line bisects the composition, dividing sea from sky. Variations in light and environmental conditions serve to sharpen or blur the boundary, subtly altering the viewer’s emotional connection with the distant horizon. Blending scientific enquiry and spirituality, Sugimoto’s photographs are meditations on eternity.

Produced over a period of three decades, Seascapes became a photographic obsession that resonated with the artist at an instinctual level. For Sugimoto, the experience of photographing Seascapes was profound — a study of deep time: ‘I start feeling that this is the creation of the universe and I am witnessing it.’ [2]

I have always been enthralled by the sea. The sea is my first memory. In the sea I can find vestigial memories of our race ― no, memories of life itself ― lingering faintly in the flow of the blood. To me, the sea is amniotic fluid. It was in the sea that life first came into being three billion years ago. Five hundred million years ago life emerged onto dry land from the sea’s womb. [3]

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