Hiroshi Sugimoto, Opticks 008, 2018, courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery — Hiroshi Sugimoto, *Opticks 008*, 2018, courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery

One Image by Nina Strand:

In a currently closed Paris I saw Hiroshi Sugimoto’s new exhibition at Marian Goodman Gallery, and I spent a long time looking at this beautiful blue work. It was a welcome escape from our lockdown situation.

Sugimoto’s subject matter include lifelike displays in museums of natural history, old American drive-in theaters as well as vast seascapes — as he has investigated time and memory throughout his practice. For him, photography functions as a system for saving memories, it is a time machine.

His current exhibition Theory of Colours at Marian Goodman consists of his new series Opticks. The title of this series is a reference to Sir Isaac Newton’s treatise Opticks, published in 1704. Opticks is according to Sugimoto essentially a series shot using a Polaroid camera, capturing the light that Newton refracted using a prism.

This new body of work is just as meditative as his seascapes. He has previously stated that photography is like a found object. That photographer never makes an actual subject; they just steal the image from the world. But not every photographer has the expertise in finding these ‘found objects’ as Sugimoto.

Known for his precise techniques, long exposures and perfectly composed large format photographs — the philosophical and conceptual aspects of his ouvre is just as important. His photographs reveal the time passing, and the mediums unique ability to render a trace of it.

The exhibition will open to the public as soon as the current lockdown is over. Meanwhile everyone can enjoy the virtual preview of the exhibition.