Book:Hiroshi Sugimoto- Stop Time,Rizzoli Publications

Photography is driven by concepts. For Hiroshi Sugimoto it is the fascination with time, trompe l’oiel, Modernism, and Architecture. And all of those fascinations are represented in his book “Hiroshi Sugimoto: Stop Time”. Through the use of a large format camera Sugimoto reaches an incredible fullness of tame, in a body of work reflecting his passion for detail and the fascination with the paradoxes of time and human perception.

By Dimitris Lempesis

“Stop Time” was printed to accompany Hiroshi’s Sugimoto exhibition organized by the Fondazione Fotografia Modena, in Modena and published by Rizzoli. This volume traces the artist’s entire career and masterpieces that have marked his research, from dioramas in natural history museums to seascapes and famous theaters photographed with long exposure times. An entire section is also dedicated to Architecture, featuring some recent “no-focus” photographs related to the most important cultural buildings in the world, such as MoMA in New York and the Serpentine Gallery in London. It also includes a series titled “Photogenic Drawings”, in which he created new positives from the never printed negatives taken by William Henry Fox Talbot in 1839. Nearly one-third of the book is devoted to explaining Sugimoto’s philosophical concepts and fascination with time, both through his own essay, “Stop Time” and essays by curator Filippo Maggia and Luca Molinari. Sugimoto is very craft oriented and works with either 4×5 inch or 8×10 inch film view cameras. He is a traditionalist who eschews digital technology and views photography as the means to fossilize time