Bøger af Hiroshi Sugimoto

«Die ältesten Dinge sind die neuesten» - dieses Motto zieht sich als paradoxe Idee durch das Werk des zeitgenössischen japanischen Künstlers und Fotografen Hiroshi Sugimoto. 2008 gründete er mit dem Architekten Tomoyuki Sakakida das New Material Research Laboratory: ein Architekturbüro, das durch die Anwendung unkonventioneller Ansätze und Interpretationen von bekannten Stoffen und Techniken «neue Materialien» entwickelt. Ziel des Labors ist es, die Verwendung alter Materialien aus der Antike, dem Mittelalter und der Neuzeit neu zu überdenken. Es setzt sich dafür ein, die Gegenwart mit vergangenen Epochen zu verbinden und diese Verbindung mittels Architektur in die Zukunft zu tragen.Old Is New taucht tief in das Verständnis von Kunst und Architektur, der archäologischen Philosophie und der gegenwärtigen Praxis des New Material Research Laboratory ein. Das reich bebilderte Buch illustriert anschaulich die Materialauswahl jedes Projekts. Fotografische Kompositionen zeigen Szenen, die ein Gleichgewicht zwischen Gegenwart und Vergangenheit darstellen. In den Haupttexten des Buches diskutieren Sugimoto und Sakakida die Praxis und den Ansatz ihrer Arbeit. Weitere Textbeiträge erläutern den Ursprung und den historischen Kontext ihrer Designprinzipien, die in der japanischen Tradition und Ästhetik wurzeln. Ein kommentiertes Verzeichnis von Materialien und klassischen japanischen Techniken wurde ergänzt mit Informationen aus den Forschungserkenntnissen des Labors.

In 1997, Sugimoto began a series of photographs of significant works of modernist architecture, intending "to trace the beginnings of our age via architecture." One of the hallmarks of Sugimoto's work is his technical mastery of the medium. He makes photographs exclusively with an 8" x 10" view camera, and his silver gelatin prints are renowned for their tonal range, total lack of grain, wealth of detail, and overall optical precision.

At first glance, Hiroshi Sugimotös photographic portrait of King Henry VIII of England is arresting: his camera has captured the tactility of Henry¿s luxurious furs and silks, the elaborate embroidery of his doublet, and the light reflecting off of each shimmering jewel. The contours of the king¿s face are so lifelike that he appears to be almost three- dimensional. It seems as though the twenty-first century artist has traveled back in time nearly five hundred years to photograph his royal subject. While Sugimotös portraits of historical figures appear to capture a lived moment in time, they are fictions. These portraits are in fact at least twice removed from the subject: his photograph captures a wax figure that has been created by a sculptor from either a photographic portrait or a painted one. Sugimoto has photographed his portraits of historical subjects in black and white, with each ¿sitter¿ posed against a black background, giving the images an austere formality. The black backdrop, free of any props or additional visual information, amplifies the illusion that we are viewing a contemporary portrait in which the subject has stepped out of history. Other portraits appear to be photojournalistic. Sugimotös image of the Duke of Wellington at Napoleon¿s deathbed is actually a photograph of the mise en scene created by the wax museum, but it registers as real in our minds. The portraits of wax figures, which in this volume are presented alongside a handful of portraits of living subjects and photographs of memento mori, call into question what it is the portrait captures. As with his other major bodies of work¿Dioramas, Seascapes, Theaters¿Sugimotös Portraits address the passage of time and history. We recognize these historical figures because of the many contemporaneous drawings, paintings, sculptures, and photographs that have recorded them. We take it for granted that a photograph of a living subject is true, but what does that mean? Are Sugimotös portraits of living subjects more ¿true¿ than the historical portraits of wax figures? Is Hans Holbein¿s painted portrait of Henry VIII truer than Sugimotös photograph of the wax figure made from Holbein¿s painting?

All of the photographs in Snow White are from his Theaters series and include many of his well known photographs of classic movie palaces and drive-ins, along with new photographs of Italian opera houses and abandoned theaters. Sugimoto began the Theaters series four decades ago. To make these images, he exposes the film inside the dark theater (or in the case of the drive-ins, outside at night) for the duration of the movie.

A rare opportunity to see unpublished works by Hiroshi Sugimoto reproduced at the highest standard