The author discusses the relevance of Sugimoto's photography mainly as it relates to the paradigm of landscape photography exemplified by Ansel Adams. He is quick to note, of course, the similarities between the equipment of the two photographers, but their products are all but independent. He considers Sugimoto's work a commentary on the formal expertise that has continued from Adams' time but as an indicator of what he feels has been lost in photography, art, and society since the earlier works: some sense of spirit.

The author begins with a surface description of the image, and brings up a series of social associations with the location given in Sugimoto's title, and relates these to the image loosely, with no claim that the imagery produces them. Rather, he notes, the image serves as a seed for a set of internal human analogs and in its presence invites us to meditate within our current state and its roots. He takes note both of the title and author of the piece, clinging, apparently, to those last sharp crags of text which accompany the image, those last vestiges of structure that Sugimoto's postmodern minimalism otherwise disintegrates.

He connects the seascapes with Sugimoto's earlier works, claiming that they continue his earlier encoding of lifelessness within facades of life. In earlier wax work, he commented on the constructed emptiness of historical personas; here he brings us face to face with the abyss. If the beach seemed normally a frabjous place, he turns its life eternal and in so doing has it embody fear.

Wilsdon claims that Sugimoto's imagery, among others, "inoculates us against everything in Romantic Art that is no longer meaningful". He unconsciously equilibrates spirit with variance and bemoans its loss of meaning and absence from current life. Ultimately though, the subtle ripples of Sugimoto's stasis bring us about face from the variance and toward a unity which has been left untouched for too long. He recommends not the discard of multiplicity but its pause, its consideration.


Wilsdon, Dominic. Hiroshi Sugimoto - Aegean Sea, Pilion 1990. Singular images : essays on remarkable photographs / edited and with an introduction by Sophie Howarth ; essays by Darsie Alexander ... [et al.]. New York : Aperture, 2005.