Hiroshi Sugimoto: Lightning Fields
by Genevieve Quick
Lightening Field 131, 2009; silver gelatin print. Hiroshi Sugimoto, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.
As a conceptual photographer often heavily invested in his process, Hiroshi Sugimoto has always been interested in photography’s ability to capture light as well as the medium’s capacity to frame and objectify its subject. In his current show, “Lightning Fields,” Sugimoto references the history of photography by pursuing two distinct projects related to William Henry Fox Talbot—inventor of the photographic negative. The first part is Sugimoto’s literal and meticulous reprinting of two of Talbot’s botanical photograms while the second is inspired by the pioneer’s explorations with electricity.
In Lightning Fields, Sugimoto plays with the tenuousness of positive and negative by purposefully incorporating electrical charges as part of the photographic process. Without a camera, Sugimoto applies a Van de Graaff 400,000-volt generator to his large negatives to create photogram-like records of transitory sparks and static electricity. The Van de Graaff, originally designed for particle acceleration, is most recognizable as the ubiquitous science museum display that when touched causes one’s hair to stand on end. Unlike the museum exhibit, the high voltage supplied by Sugimoto’s Van de Graaff is extremely dangerous. This heightened sense of corporeal harm is reinforced by static electricity’s capacity to “scar” and—to a traditional photographer—ruin large format negatives upon removal from the camera. By essentially establishing a micro-environment in the dark room akin to the conditions of an electrical storm, Sugimoto creates lush large-scale black and white prints that resemble botanical and biological images, landscapes, high-power microscopic magnifications, and lightning itself. This richly layered process creates works that, in the tradition of Talbot before him, elegantly blur the boundary between science and photography.
“Hiroshi Sugimoto: Lightning Fields” is on view at Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco through October 31, 2009.
