Hiroshi Sugimoto E.U.R. San Pietro e Paolo

cm 51 x 61

Having trained at the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles, Hiroshi Sugimoto began his career in the 1970s with photographs organized in thematic series with such subjects as cinemas, dioramas of the American Museum of Natural History, historic buildings, seascapes, drive-ins and abstractions, sheets of film with impressions made by electrical charges. For the most part, he uses large format analogue cameras and develops and prints them in black and white. "E.U.R. San Pietro e Paolo" is part of the series entitled Architecture (1997-2002) which includes photographs of historic architecture of the 19th and 20th centuries isolated from the urban context. From the Brooklyn Bridge to the works of Wagner, Gaudi, Gropius, Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, to the most recent works by Gehry and Tadao Ando, Sugimoto traces a personal history of modern architecture. For this series of images, he used a large-format camera and a special focusing technique referred to as “beyond infinity.” The resulting photographs are out of focus, like primordial visions, archetypes eroded by the passage of time that deny the instantaneous nature of photography. As the artist himself says, “only the most significant buildings resist. If the architecture has no power, it disappears.”

No

F. Bonami (ed.), Hiroshi Sugimoto, exhibition catalogue (Passariano, Azienda speciale Villa Manin), Passariano 2007; F. Bonami (ed.), Hiroshi Sugimoto. Architecture, exhibition catalogue (Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art; Pasadena, Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery, ArtCenter College of Design), Ostfildern 2007; F. Maggia, C. Dall’Olio (eds.), Hiroshi Sugimoto. Stop time, exhibition catalogue (Modena, Fondazione Fotografia), Milan 2015.

Foto Patrizia Tocci

Donation by Claudia Gian Ferrari

Photography