Biography
Sugimoto’s masterful photographs exemplify both the craftsman’s will to visual beauty and perfection, and an incisive exploration of philosophical notions of space and time, imagination and reality, science and history.
Hiroshi Sugimoto was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1948. He graduated from Saint Paul’s University, Tokyo in 1970 and in 1974 from the Art Center College of Design, Los Angeles. In 1974 he moved to New York where he currently resides.
Sugimoto’s masterful photographs exemplify both the craftsman’s will to visual beauty and perfection, and an incisive exploration of philosophical notions of space and time, imagination and reality, science and history. Drawing on the classical photographic tradition, Sugimoto creates distilled, meditative images which unite the concrete and abstract, and contain meaningful conceptual underpinnings which seek to materialize the ‘invisible realm of the mind’ and the unconscious. In his process, Sugimoto seeks to comprehend the nature of perception, exploring duration and temporality through photography, and an understanding of how radical shifts through the past enlighten the present.
Recent solo exhibitions have been at the following institutions: Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art, Kyoto, Japan (2020); Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel (2018); Nagasaki Prefectural Museum, Nagasaki, Japan (2018); Palace of Versailles, France (2018); Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels (2018); The Japan Society, New York (2017); Chateau Le Coste, Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade, France (2017); Fondazione Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy (2017); MOA, Museum of Art, Atami, Japan (2017); Casa Garriga I Nogués, Barcelona; Recoletos Exhibition Hall, Madrid (2016); and Phillips Collectioni, Washington D.C. (2015).
Sugimoto has been the recipient of numerous prestigious awards including the National Arts Club Medal of Honor in Photography, New York (2018); the Centenary Medal, The Royal Photo- graphic Society, London (2017); Isamu Noguchi Award, New York (2014); Officier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Paris (2013); Praemium Imperiale Award, Tokyo (2009); and the Has- selblad Foundation International Award in Photography, Gothenburg, Sweden (2001). He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation (1980) and the National Endowment for the Arts (1982).
In 2017, Hiroshi Sugimoto founded the Odawara Art Foundation, Japan, dedicated to fostering and promoting both traditional Japanese and International contemporary performing arts practice.
Sugimoto’s masterful photographs exemplify both the craftsman’s will to visual beauty and perfection, and an incisive exploration of philosophical notions of space and time, imagination and reality, science and history.
Selected Works

Hiroshi Sugimoto and Gabriel Orozco in Conversation
Moderated by Mami Kataoka
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