Hiroshi Sugimoto: Architecture

Known for his long-exposure photographic series of empty movie theaters and drive-ins, seascapes, museum dioramas, and waxworks, Hiroshi Sugimoto turned his camera on international icons of twentieth century architecture in 1997. His seemingly timeless photographs depict structures as diverse as the Empire State Building, Le Corbusier´s Chapel de Nôtre Dame du Haut, and Tadao Ando´s Church of Light in Osaka. The resulting black-and-white photographs, deliberately blurred and shot from unusual angles, are not attempts at documentation, but rather evocation—meant to isolate the buildings from their contexts, allowing them to exist as dreamlike, uninhabited ideals. Other buildings represented in the series are Philippe Starck´s Asahi Breweries, Fumihiko Maki´s Fujisawa Municipal Gymnasium, the United Nations Building, the Chrysler Building, Giuseppi Terragni´s Santelia Monument, Como, the World Trade Center, Mies van der Rohe´s Seagram Building, Antonio Gaudí’s Casa Batlló II, the 1922 Schindler House, and buildings by Frank Gehry, Frank Lloyd Wright, and many others in Europe, North America, and Asia.