Hiroshi Sugimoto

Hiroshi Sugimoto Seascapes

This picture is my favourite, it shows the sea as a flat wash of silver light framed half way in the frame, it mirrors the sky above in it is washed from left to right (or right to left). The exposure is so long that all the individual detail in waves or clouds is completely washed into silver light
“In 1980 he began working on an ongoing series of photographs of the sea and its horizon, Seascapes, in locations all over the world, using an old-fashioned large-format camera to make exposures of varying duration (up to three hours). The locations range from the English Channel and the Cliffs of Moher  to the Arctic Ocean, fromPositano, Italy, to the Tasman Sea and from the Norwegian Sea at Vesterålen to the Black Sea at Ozuluce in Turkey. The black-and-white pictures are all exactly the same size, bifurcated exactly in half by the horizon line. The systematic nature of Sugimoto's project recalls the work Sunrise and Sunset at Praiano by Sol LeWitt, in which he photographed sunrises and sunsets over the Tyrrhenian Sea off Praiano, Italy, on the Amalfi Coast.”
wikipedia

Pin hole or a neutral density filter, same size prints
Sunrise and sunset at praiano by sol lewitt


Seascapes


Water and air. So very commonplace are these substances, they hardly attract attention―and yet they vouchsafe our very existence.
The beginnings of life are shrouded in myth: Let there water and air. Living phenomena spontaneously generated from water and air in the presence of light, though that could just as easily suggest random coincidence as a Deity. Let's just say that there happened to be a planet with water and air in our solar system, and moreover at precisely the right distance from the sun for the temperatures required to coax forth life. While hardly inconceivable that at least one such planet should exist in the vast reaches of universe, we search in vain for another similar example.
Mystery of mysteries, water and air are right there before us in the sea. Every time I view
the sea, I feel a calming sense of security, as if visiting my ancestral home; I embark on a
voyage of seeing. 

Hiroshi Sugimoto website
He has made these pictures that take on the ideas that all life has come from water air and sunlight, in these pictures we can see all three things. Water in the Sea, air in the Sky, and the photograph is created by light. These photographs calm him; by the places he shot them.
Another person could view these photographs with suspicion; the shutter speeds and mist in some of the compositions hide the unknown, which can make people uneasy.
I am not sure how I feel about these images, as imprinted in me is a little fear of the unknown, but I also love seeing the sea, not just when it is calm, but when it is ferocious. I do feel relaxed and calm by these photographs but I remember the excitement of seeing the sea forcefully crashing on rocks.I remember that I could be suspicious of the mist and what could be hidden by the long shutter speeds, but i am calmed by the silver quality of the frames.

Ever the romantic enthusisast of the photographic medium, the seascape series are testament to his ardor.  While they are deeply 'photographic' they are also deeply metaphysical and existential documents.  As a form and cultural construct they exist as the ultimate distilling of the form of photographic landscape. Perhaps this is a clue as to the intent of the artist. They are explorations of spiritual and physical boundary as much as an exploration of the phenomenology of the picture plane (an ongoing concern of his). The longer-exposed images, apparently exposed through a neutral-density filter (permitting him to expose for an artiificially long duration) distinguish themselves from their shorter counterparts. The existence of both within the larger series is enigmatic. Waves and other features which would otherwise be erased by the passing of only several seconds are revealed in some though not others.  To me, this begs an interesting question - though it seems likely to me that the depth of this desire for control does not extend so deeply- more likely that there are elements in these works that he leaves to chance - much as he leaves the exposure of the negative in the movie theatre series as a function of the general luminosity of the film genre being viewed.

C4 gallery http://c4gallery.com/artist/database/hiroshi-sugimoto/seascapes/hiroshi-sugimoto-seascapes.html


Here the text notes the boundary of the sea, there is a primeval feeling about the sea, humans are land mammals, the sea is for sealife. For one to be lost at sea it is often not possible to survive for long, however to be lost on land is not so hard, one has the ground beneath their feet and can at least walk and do things, rather than be floating in nothingness.
The sea is a boundary for other lands, there are other continents across the water, the only way to get there is to cross the water.
There is a barrier between the human eye and some of these photographs; the photographs exposed and faster shutter speeds are instantly recognisable for us as the waves are visible. The long shutter shots are barriers to us, as the human eye cannot see like that. We see things the same as the photographers with quicker shutter speeds. Displaying these with the long shutter frames helps to create a context and roundness of the project

The shorter exposed photographs dispel any feeling one might have of suspicion of the unknown in the time barrier and the mist of others