http://www.klatmagazine.com/en/art-en/hiroshi-sugimoto/58340
WORDS
Sara Dolfi Agostini
15 SEPTEMBER 2017
Since the 1970s Hiroshi Sugimoto has produced a highly recognizable corpus of photographs: marine horizons, theaters, drive-ins and dioramas. Silent images, tending to essentiality and plucked from the flow of the time, that catch the eye as archetypes of a civilization still pervaded by a sense of eternity. Sugimoto’s photographic technique is always the same: the evocative power of the large format and the grace of black and white....
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Q. In a decade crammed with events for the history of photography, one that has seen destabilizing developments like the closure of numerous photographic agencies and the emergence of the social networks, vehicles of a completely new imagery, the debate over the status of the photograph has not only not challenged the value of your work, but has made it—if possible—even more decisive.
A. I don’t argue with the way the world is going. The world is changing, I stay myself. I think that photography has come to an end with the 21st century. Today there is a new instrument, a new language, but it is no longer photography. Photography, invented in the 19th century, was magic, it froze movement and recorded history. That status has been lost forever. Now you take a picture and then you alter it any way you want with Photoshop or some other program. Digital photography has little to do with reality, it’s just a clipping from our imagination.
Q. When did “photography come to an end?”
A. In 2012, when Kodak declared bankruptcy. Kodak represented photography from its beginnings until that day. The daguerreotype was successful for a limited period of 4 or 5 years, but it was Talbot’s calotype that gave rise to photography, which lasted for 170 years. That’s a long time, if you think about it....
