Memories of Origins – Hiroshi Sugimoto

Hiroshi Sugimoto is among the world’s most famous photographers, and perhaps the last custodian of traditional photografic methods. He has concentrated his research on two fundamental themes: Time, the protagonist of most of his refined photografic series; and History, which the Master has placed at the center of his more recent artistic production. In the film, shot over 200 days, the concepts of “memory” and “origin” become keys to an approach to his work, and his multiple means of expression, from his debut to the “Lightning Fields” (made without a camera, by means of electric generators); to his scuplture and installations, based on mathematical formulas, to the recent revisitations of traditional Japanese architecture and theater. Following Sugimoto from his New York studio, his house in Tokyo and his many exhibitions around the world, we learn he’s a connoisseur of oriental antiquities, a collector of objects associated with the history of Japan, and of the first experimental “photogenic drawings” by William Henry Fox Talbot. This documentary was nominated for the International Emmy Award, 2011.