Interviewing Hiroshi Sugimoto is a humbling
experience. His past few days were spent speaking to journalists eager to
interview one of the world’s greatest photographers, and the weariness is
visible. But where most artists like to launch into a well rehearsed statement
about their work, he is quietly waiting for my next question, a soft smile on
his face. But then again, Sugimoto is not like most artists.
His new show at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art is part of this
year’s Edinburgh International Festival’s exploration of the Far
East, for which he chose his two most recent series, Photogenic Drawings and Lightning Fields. The former shows large
scale reproductions of the early negatives of 19th c. photography pioneer
William Henry Fox Talbot who, Sugimoto says, “gave me intuition of the Lightning Fields study with his photos.”
The second series is produced through the play of violent electrical discharges
on photographic film. Shown in Europe for the
very first time, the works have already gathered rave reviews from the press
and admiring gasps from the Gallery staff.
Photogenic
Drawings (the term Fox Talbot used to describe his
first images) is not just a visual testament to photography; it is the story of
its origins and the narrative of Fox Talbot’s life.
The series takes visitors back to 1833, when Fox Talbot went to Italy
for his honeymoon and, frustrated by his inability to sketch the surrounding
landscape, decided to invent a machine to this extent; the same trip during
which a sunburn got him thinking that the effect the sun had had on his skin
could be reproduced onto paper.
The photos of leaves and flowers reveal the details of how the inventor placed
the botanical specimens on light-sensitive paper and in the direct sunlight, to
create the very first negatives. The different shades of blue, green and sepia
show the different chemicals with which he experimented to fix the image on the
paper (he found a strong solution of table salt did the trick). The blurry
oriel window and roof lines describe Lacock Abbey, where Fox Talbot conducted
most of his research. A decade of his life, presented through the photographed
objects slowly getting clearer; ten years during which Fox Talbot took what are
probably the very first portraits in the history of photography, and which have
most likely never been developed before, even by him. His family’s governess,
two relatives, and a young houseboy employed at the Abbey who also served as
his assistant; his features are so serious and his outfit so typically
Victorian that it is difficult to realise he was only 14 or 15 at the time the
picture was taken.
The 180 year-old negatives are now so fragile that any viewing is limited to
fifteen seconds of dim light. “Of course, it’s hard to convince museum people
[to let me develop them],” Sugimoto starts.
“I bought my own 15 pieces and worked with the Getty
Museum and the Met Museum;
they both have a major collection of negatives. As do the National
Media Museum
in London.” He
adds with his typical quiet laugh, “But I didn’t have a contact there, so I
didn’t ask them.”
Acquiring the works was however not simple; for Fox Talbot negatives don’t come
by easily and aren’t cheap either. Sugimoto recalls, “They’re not available at
all! I have a friend in New York
who is a private collector and private dealer. I contacted him and he showed me
his collection.” He adds, “They’re quite expensive. $400,000 on average.”
The negative of an exquisite, delicate piece of lace was in fact half a million
dollars, making it the most expensive image displayed in the show. Next to it,
the portrait of Amelina Petit, the family’s French governess, was a ‘mere’
$30,000 (the cheapest negative) despite its mesmerizing Vermeer-like quality.
Half of the face is in the shade, in a soft and peaceful scene with details
that blur the closer one gets to the photo. The unexpectedly lower price came
from the fact the original, much smaller negative was thought to be
under/over-exposed; Sugimoto was able to immediately identify the beauty
waiting to be unveiled in the positive image.
Across the corridor, Sugimoto describes Lightning
Fields as the process of “turning an ally into my nemesis”. Unable to avoid
the problem of static electricity which would often ruin his photographs, Sugimoto
started applying electrical charges on film. Inspired by the experiments Fox
Talbot had conducted on electricity with Faraday, he tested various generators
before settling on the Van De Graff generator, capable of producing a charge of
400,000 volts. The charge is then applied onto a film laid on a wired plate,
that is then discharged and developed; the mesmerising result is that of a
light particle caught on film.
As Sugimoto and his assistant admit, in a very matter-of-fact way (“Yes.”), to
getting shocked several times during the process, I wonder if they sought
scientific advice first. Sugimoto brushes it off with his usual laugh, “Nothing
so professional, just a sense of how dangerous it was. Just to get the level of
danger.”
His unusual practice also extends to the frames he commissioned for the
Photogenic Drawings series. Made of lead by a specialist company, the
exhibition technicians were required to wear special protective gloves to
handle them. “It’s a nineteenth century feeling I wanted created… A kind of
classical, antique feeling.” he explains. The health issues revolving around
the material also means the company used by Sugimoto is only allowed to produce
so many frames a year. As he adds softly, “The Health Department stepped in. A
hundred is the limit.”
The power of the Lightning Fields
images resides in their ethereal and highly evocative quality. The sparks are
often compared to trees, a snowy, deserted landscape or early life forms. The
intensity is such that one feels compelled to walk into the picture and look
closer, only to find the details vanish into what could be a photograph, a
charcoal drawing or even an oil painting.
Some images present branch-like shapes that morph into delicate, feathery
strokes. Sugimoto explains those specific images are created by using a salted
solution to discharge the films, as opposed to discharging them in dry air. The
idea came to Sugimoto after he had conducted his early experiments in what he
describes as “very severe winter conditions”.
“After several years, I decided to move to a more moist condition - more like a
spring day, with higher temperatures and humidity more than 50%. As I expected
it’s very hard to create a spark in that air. So one day I just gave up, but
[without that spark] the film itself is very, very highly charged. I didn’t
know what to do, so I just dipped it into water, just for no reason. And then I
saw the release of the images in the water. So this is a new stage, a new
discovery.”
Sugimoto experimented further, eventually settling for water salted using
Himalayan salt. He explains, “Panspermia is how life started on Earth. It’s
about the impact of meteorites that contained amino-acids, and the strong
energy it created when it hit the water - that’s how the first organic
materials developed in the water.”
He adds, “The primordial sea used to be saltier than now. This is just a very
conceptual idea, but [I thought that] if I used water salted like the
primordial sea… I knew that Himalayan salt is [left from the] bottom of the
primordial sea. So that salt contains the primordial formula of the ancient
sea.”
He concludes, “My interest is to recreate the primordial state of the sea.” and
simply adds “And then sparks arise.”
Sugimoto is still working on the Lightning
Fields series, as well as others which often span over several years or
even decades. When I ask at what point he decides a series is finished, his
answer is simple. “It depends on the situation. Seascapes isn’t finished; I keep working on it. But it’s getting
harder and harder to do, with the airport conditions and the security check;
the x-rays damage the films. I’m mainly doing it in Japan so I don’t have to go through
the airport.”
Although started in 1980, Seascapes
is probably the series that brought Sugimoto to popular attention in 2009, when
Bono chose one of the photographs as the cover of U2’s latest album. Images of
the sea and the sky, with the horizon line dividing the image in half, they
range from clear details of the waves to a landscape drowned in mist. I wonder
if he carefully picks the seasons and corresponding climatic conditions, or if
he sets to work on a location with a specific idea of what he wants to capture.
His answer is accompanied by his usual laugh: “How I choose the seasons? The
most comfortable ones!” Specific climatic conditions, he adds, are “hard to
estimate. I have to be there, usually in the springtime. I study the local
geography and the weather tendency, then [work there for] how long…” He pauses.
“I have no idea, just until I get something. Sometimes longer than a month.”
As the interview comes to an end, Sugimoto prepares for a talk to a lecture
theatre packed with both amateur and professional photographers, who will
eagerly queue to get their books signed. Some even ask the official event
photographer if they can be featured in the shots alongside the artist. One
breaks into a grin when showing the autographed catalogue, recalling how
Sugimoto inspired his work throughout his own time studying photography.
And inspiration is probably what most will experience when visiting the
exhibition, as the show succeeds in creating a world where one will slow down
and contemplate the outline of a branch of rosemary or old China vase, or
the sublime in a transient stroke of lightning.
The
exhibition ‘Hiroshi Sugimoto’ took place at the Scottish National Gallery of
Modern Art (4 Aug-25 Sept 2011) as part of the Edinburgh International Festival. An earlier
version of this article was published in Svelte magazine (http://cargocollective.com/sveltemag)
on 28 August 2011.
Lightning Fields 168, 2009, by Hiroshi Sugimoto. Image courtesy of the artist.