Hiroshi Sugimoto famous quotes

05-25-2025

However fake the subject, once photographed, it's as good as real.
-- Hiroshi Sugimoto

#Real #Fake #Subjects
Mystery of mysteries, water and air are right there before us in the sea. Every time I view the sea, I feel a calming sense of security, as if visiting my ancestral home; I embark on a voyage of seeing.
-- Hiroshi Sugimoto

#Home #Air #Views
I'm inviting the spirits into my photography. It's an act of God.
-- Hiroshi Sugimoto

#Photography #Spirit #Photographer
I didn't want to be criticized for taking low-quality photographs, so I tried to reach the best, highest quality of photography and then to combine this with a conceptual art practice. But thinking back, that was the wrong decision [laughs]. Developing a low-quality aesthetic is a sign of serious fine art-I still see this.
-- Hiroshi Sugimoto

#Photography #Art #Thinking
Humans have changed the landscape so much, but images of the sea could be shared with primordial people. I just project my imagination on to the viewer, even the first human being. I think first and then imagine some scenes. Then I go out and look for them. Or I re-create these images with my camera. I love photography because photography is the most believable medium. Painting can lie, but photography never lies: that is what people used to believe.
-- Hiroshi Sugimoto

#Photography #Lying #Believe
All over the planet, nature is being transformed into 'un-nature' at breakneck speed...My life is part of natural history. I long to know where that history came from and where it is going.
-- Hiroshi Sugimoto

#Long #Life Is #Speed
Photography is like a found object. A photographer never makes an actual subject; they just steal the image from the world...Photography is a system of saving memories. It's a time machine, in a way, to preserve the memory, to preserve time.
-- Hiroshi Sugimoto

#Photography #Memories #Machines
To me photography functions as a fossilization of time.
-- Hiroshi Sugimoto

#Photography #Function
Fossils work almost the same way as photography as a record of history. The accumulation of time and history becomes a negative of the image. And this negative comes off, and the fossil is the positive side. This is the same as the action of photography.
-- Hiroshi Sugimoto

#Photography #Negative #Records
One night I had an idea while I was at the movies: to photograph the film itself. I tried to imagine photographing an entire feature film with my camera. I could already picture the projection screen making itself visible as a white rectangle. In my imagination, this would appear as a glowing, white rectangle; it would come forward from the projection surface and illuminate the entire theater. This idea struck me as being very interesting, mysterious, and even religious.
-- Hiroshi Sugimoto

#Religious #Night #Glowing
I try to never be satisfied; this way I will always be challenging my spirit.
-- Hiroshi Sugimoto

#Challenges #Trying #Way
It's pre-photography, a fossilization of time, Americans have done the Zen garden to death. I wanted to do something different.
-- Hiroshi Sugimoto

#Photography #Garden #Different
If I already have a vision, my work is almost done. The rest is a technical problem.
-- Hiroshi Sugimoto

#Vision #Done #Problem
When people call me a photographer, I always feel like something of a charlatanâ€”at least in Japanese. The word shashin, for photograph, combines the characters sha, meaning to reflect or copy, and shin, meaning truth, hence the photographer seems to entertain grand delusions of portraying truth.
-- Hiroshi Sugimoto

#Character #People #Photographer
Art is technique: a means by which to materialize the invisible realm of the mind.
-- Hiroshi Sugimoto

#Art #Mean #Mind
People have been reading photography as a true document, at the same time they are now getting suspicious. I am basically an honest person, so I let the camera capture whatever it captures whether you believe it or not is up to you; itâ€™s not my responsibility, blame my camera, not me.
-- Hiroshi Sugimoto

#Photography #Believe #Reading
Art resides even in things with no artistic intentions.
-- Hiroshi Sugimoto

#Art #Artistic #Intention

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