Seascapes

by Hiroshi Sugimoto (Photographs), Karry Brougher

For more than 30 years, Hiroshi Sugimoto has traveled the world photographing its seas, producing an extended meditation on the passage of time and the natural history of the earth reduced to its most basic, primordial substances: water and air. Always capturing the sea at a moment of absolute tranquility, Sugimoto has composed all the photographs identically, with the horizon line precisely bifurcating each image. The repetition of this strict format reveals the uniqueness of each meeting of sea and sky, with the horizon never appearing exactly the same way twice. The photographs are romantic yet absolutely rigorous, apparently universal but exceedingly specific.
The second in a series of luxurious, beautifully produced volumes each focused on specific bodies of Sugimoto's work, Seascapes presents the complete series of more than 200 Seascapes for the first time in one publication. Some of the photographs included have never before been reproduced.
Hiroshi Sugimoto (born 1948) was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan, where he studied politics and sociology at Rikkyo University, later retraining as an artist at the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles. He has been active as a photographer since the 1970s. Some of his major photographic series include the Dioramas, Theaters, Portraits, Architecture and Lightning Fields. He currently lives in New York and Tokyo.

Genres: Photography, Art, Japan, Art and Photography

72 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

Reviews

[Myhte · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every time I view the sea, I feel a calming sense of security, as if visiting my ancestral home; I embark on a voyage of seeing.

I, too, am an anachronist: rather than live at the cutting edge of the contemporary, I feel more at ease in the absent past.

the pencil line I draw being only an approximation of an invisible mathematical line. Endeavors in art are also mere approximations, efforts to render visible unseen realms.

Whenever I stand on a cliff looking at the sea, I envision an infinite beyond. The horizon lies within bounds and the imagination stretches to infinity.

With deity or Buddha both vanished from this day and age, in what can I take refuge? Perhaps the only object of devotion I have left is the origin of my consciousness, the sea. And so I enshrine a seascape within the water sphere.

Sunlight travels through black empty space, strikes and suffers my prism, and refracts into an infinite continuum of color.

Cranking the worm gear by hand to adjust the mirror angle to compensate for the rising sun, I managed to keep the color band within my field of vision.

Consistently clear Tokyo winter mornings found me swimming in a sea of colors. With neither Newton’s cool, impassionate arithmetic gaze on nature, nor Goethe’s warm poetic reflexivity, I employed my own photographic devices toward a middle way.

[Paul H. · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of those high-wire balancing acts of almost-banal abstraction, where almost any other photographer would have failed -- and believe me, many photographers (including talented ones, such as Misrach and Eggleston) have, in fact, failed in their attempt to put together serial photos of oceans, sunsets, clouds, etc. Thankfully Sugimoto is a genius and didn't have any issues.

[Eleonora · Rating 5 out of 5]

bought in a small bookstore in kyoto. after talking to the owner, I discovered that some days before while I was in the island of naoshima, I had seen the same exact photos of this book at the benesse museum. very suggestive, dream-like seascapes

[Courtland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Abstract, Precise, Tethered, Untethered, Monolithic, Primordial Images of Sea, Air, and Light-Loci Tranquility.

[Flora Wong · Rating 5 out of 5]

2015
The kind of art reinterprets and transcends time, connecting people

[Jeff_mute · Rating 5 out of 5]

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[Jesse Campagna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mmmm...everything and nothing.