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Architecture.
Photographs by Hiroshi Sugimoto. Text by Francesco Bonami, John Yau, and Marco de Michelis.
Distributed Art Publishers,
New York,
2003.
168 pp.,
68 tritone illustrations,
10¾x12".
Running as a constant thread throughout Sugimoto's work is his concern with the concept of time as the foundation of our perceptions. "For Sugimoto, the unattainable is the state of consciousness that transcends the essence of reality, which is time passing. Believing transcendence is impossible, he asks: why do we live in time? And what do we learn from living in time? What is distinctive about Sugimoto's approach to these universal interrogations is how he envisions time shaping us."-John Yau. Besides gathering together 100 of his distilled, out-of-focus architectural photographs, the editors of this hefty catalogue have included several paramount essays that address head-on, and embrace lovingly, Sugimoto's artistic endeavors. "Dear Sugimoto, your architectures, austere and yet so uncertain, represent so wonderfully how impotent we are when facing impermanence. So 'why not believe in God?', wrote the Japanese writer Akutagawa Ryunosuke in his short story Cogwheels. 'If you believe shadow, I don't see how you can help believing light also.' Maybe with your pictures, dear Sugimoto you found an answer."-Francesco Bonami (curator of this years' Venice Biennale).
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