Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto – 4 fascinating video interviews

 JAPANESE PHOTOGRAPHY

 Thank heavens for youtube which has given us a whole new way to appreciate art and learn about artists.

In these video interviews, internationally-acclaimed Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto gives us a glimpse of his warm personality. Intelligent and mild-mannered, he responds with self-deprecating humour to questions about the source of his inspiration and his innovative approach to traditional photographic techniques.

What we found particularly fascinating in these videos is how Sugimoto uses one series of work to inform and serve as inspiration for later ones. In the T Magazine video, he describes how his earlier work with waxworks and still forms inspired him to photograph mannequins instead of live models and the resulting images have a sculptural quality, an interest which he explored in his ‘Joe Series’ based on Richard Serra sculptures.

T Magazine: It’s all about Hiroshi Sugimoto – 4: 29 – Feb 2008 – fashion as sculpture – In his first fashion commission for the New York Times style magazine, Sugimoto describes why he photographs fashion on mannequins rather than live models and how he develops his ideas some of which lie latent for 30 or 40 years. “There is always something being cooked in my noodle”

Art 21: Hiroshi Sugimoto –  1:27 mins – Feb 2008 – Photography as a tool to explore time – A  video snippet of the delightfully warm Hiroshi Sugimoto explaining how he shuns sophisticated and computer-generated techniques. He demonstrates how he manipulates light with shades in his Paris studio: difficult to control he says but still the way to make the best pictures.

Hiroshi Sugimoto Portrait series

Hiroshi Sugimoto Part 1 – 6:50 mins – 2007 – Waxworks and the ‘Portrait’ series – As his work is being installed in Villa Manin in his first serious show in Italy, Sugimoto talks about his photographs of wax images of the Pope, Lady Diana, Holbein’s Henry VIII, Queen Elizabeth. Sugimoto explains that when he makes the images of the waxworks he aims to recreate the original photos and paintings on which the wax works are based.

Hiroshi Sugimoto talks – 3:55 mins – Oct 2006 – at his ‘Joe Series’ exhibition at the Pulitzer in 2006 – In 2003 Sugimoto visited the Pulitzer Foundation to photograph the building designed by fellow countryman Tadao Ando but quickly turned his attention to Richard Serra’s sculpture Joe installed in the courtyard and dedicated to the late Joseph Pulitzer. He discusses the resulting photographs and  his ‘twice as infinity’ technique in which he focuses beyond infinity to make the images.

 

 

Related posts:

• Internationally-renowned fashion photographer Wing Shya returns to art – Nov 2008
• Survey of Japanese photography at Paris Photo 2008 – Oct 2008
• Survey of Japanese photography at ICP first at US in decades – Jun 2008

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