Hiroshi Sugimoto: it’s hard to look away from this staggeringly inventive show
The perfect shot takes time. In 1976 – a few years after he’d left Tokyo for New York, by way of art school in LA – Hiroshi Sugimoto walked into a cinema in Manhattan’s East Village. The price of entry was a dollar; the place so ramshackle that nobody noticed him unfold an antiquated bellows camera in the last row. He opened the shutter as the film began, and closed it hours later, when the source of light had finally disappeared.
The source of light. One of the first things a visitor to the Hayward Gallery’s retrospective, Hiroshi Sugimoto: Time Machine, will notice is a field of white dots, burning bright in the half-gloom. It’s a thrilling moment. Head closer, and you’ll find Theaters: the grand cinemas Sugimoto has been capturing for five decades.