Hiroshi Sugimoto (b. 1948)

‘Sugimoto’s seascapes (begun in 1980) represent various bodies of water in the same deceptively simple composition: the horizon line evenly divides the frame into water and air ... They are not so much depictions of geographic locations as they are attempts at capturing on film the qualities of light, air, water and atmosphere. In emphasizing these natural elements, Sugimoto drapes like a veil the decidedly intangible over the specific, the concept over the concrete, returning all seas to their fundamental state as water and air. Through the nearly abstract, almost sacred geometric composition and the repetition of this yin-yang relationship from image to image, from ocean to ocean around the world, the sea is returned to a kind of primordial state untouched by humankind. Sugimoto’s seascapes are not photographs of the sea; rather they are images that arise out of the murky depths of the past, time machines that are capable of extending our vision back beyond our own existence, images that focus on the sea with the very substances - water and air - that would ultimately give rise to life itself’
(K. Brougher, ‘Impossible Photography’, Hiroshi Sugimoto, exh. cat. Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., 2005, p. 23).