In his section about Rineke Dijkstra, Fried discusses mainly the comparisons and contrast between Dijkstra's imagery and that of Diane Arbus. He emphasizes the moralization famously leveled against Arbus by Susan Sontag, and inquires as to the differential between Arbus and Dijkstra. He notes their similar frank and potentially brutal nature, and their use of full-body imagery and often wide angle lenses to present an inescapable surveillant force.

He notes that contemporary criticism of her work is far less harsh than was the response to Arbus; he does not consider whether this might merely be a function of temporal emergence, of coloration, or of any fundamental sociological differential.



Instead the main contrast he posits is that of subject psychology; since the subjects of Dijkstra's photographs are apparently more comfortable in their own skin, we become more comfortable with their image. But this is not the whole story: as he points out, the subjects are not entirely at ease with the photographic set, and their own unconscious awkwardness is made apparent in the unprepared placement of limbs.

Rineke's subjects are the universal unprepared, as Fried outlines, whether they be immediately post-natal mothers, young soldiers, or children perhaps not yet fully aware of their surroundings in the setting of a beach. He considers how they all share a fixed gaze on the camera, and points to this as an amplification of their inadequate situational unity; superficially, the flash Dijkstra uses isolates the subjects from their background and puts them apart.

Though he does not make the connection, we could easily imagine Sugimoto lurking behind the beach subjects, bringing their lack of exuberance in line with the relative permanence of their environment's procedural progression.

Fried, Michael. Why photography matters as art as never before / Michael Fried. New Haven : Yale University Press, c2008.

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.