Born on 23rd February 1948, currently 68 years old, Hiroshi Sugimoto was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan. He took his earliest photographs in high school, photographing film footage of Audrey Hepburn as it played in a movie theatre.
In 1970, Sugimoto studied politics and sociology at Rikkyo University in Tokyo. In 1974, he retrained as an artist and received his BFA in Fine Arts at the Art Centre College of Design in California. Afterwards, Sugimoto settled in New York City and soon started working as a dealer of Japanese antiquities in Soho. Sugimoto is a Japanese Conceptual photographer. He pays careful attention to light and shadows in his photography. Sugimoto photographs theatres and opera houses, natural history dioramas and even wax figures using long exposures to create eerie images with unnatural lighting. |
Birds of Prey.
This photo, taken by Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto, shows two parent eagles watching over their young chicks on a mountainside. The foreground shows a confident, male Golden Eagle watching over his family as he guards a young wolf he has recently killed. A female Golden Eagle feeds her two chicks in the middle ground and the background shows mountains in the distance. A black and white filter has been applied to this photo. I know this because there are no other colours in the image. Alternatively, the little colour could be due to the age of the photograph, when colour wasn't a big thing at the time. |
Polar Attack.
This photo by Japanese Conceptual Photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto attracts the viewer by its intense imagery. The image shows a large Polar Bear leaning over a dead seal. The white, blank landscape in the background focuses the viewers attention onto the foreground and brings out the prominent colours of the dead seal. The contrasting colours and light and darkness blend well together as they are complete opposites. This photo gives a quite unique, compelling perspective. It is very up close to the animals which would usually remain unseen or viewed from a distance. The perspective is from standard eye level and looks straight ahead, not angled or tilted. |