Book dossier

Hiroshi Sugimoto

by Hiroshi Sugimoto, Thomas Kellein

A collection of photographs that pay homage to the work of photography pioneer William Henry Fox Talbot. Titled "Photogenic Drawing", these photographs were printed from paper negatives produced by Talbot 170 years ago. Sugimoto has effectively played variations on the original scores provided by Talbot's negatives, transferring to a different medium images that would otherwise disappear and be lost to obscurity. "Lightening Fields "are prints in which the light is burned in directly by applying electrical current to the film. The inspiration for this technique comes from "aborted discharge" experiments by Talbot. To create "Lightning Fields", Sugimoto ran electric current directly over the film and printed the results. This series is also related to Talbot since it recalls the experiments that he carried ou - and eventually discontinued - with electrical discharge in his work as a scientist.