I went to see Hiroshi Sugimoto's exhibition "Extinction Photographs" currently being held at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. There were no particularly new works; it felt like a culmination of Sugimoto's work to date.
What was new, however, was that each photograph was accompanied by a mysterious kyoka (comic poem) written by Sugimoto himself. True to his pen name "Sutton-kyo" (meaning scatterbrained or off-key), they were full of lame "dad jokes," and looking at X (Twitter), the reputation was extremely poor.
Some say Sugimoto is excellent as an artist but second-rate as a viewer of his own work. Others say Sugimoto's performance is crude to begin with. Some even criticize it harshly, calling it trash.
Is that really true? I actually think that even this massive online booing is part of the scheme of this "old fox" Sugimoto.
This is because I believe the artist Hiroshi Sugimoto is "Tamori wearing the skin of Daisetz Suzuki."
Time, memory, eternity, the sea, light, Shinto, Noh, ancient art.
Large-format monochrome photographs.
A serene exhibition space. No matter how you look at it, it's ultra-cool and "ZEN."
It's incredibly Daisetz Suzuki.
However, if you look at the works carefully, doesn't something quite Tamori-like emerge from within them?
Yes, Hiroshi Sugimoto's work has been a grand "dad joke" from the very beginning.
Taking Photographs of Photographs
Take, for example, the early "Dioramas" series.
A natural history museum diorama is a device that reproduces lost ecosystems and extinct animals using taxidermy, background paintings, and lighting. If you think about it, the diorama itself has a function very similar to photography.
In other words, a device that makes lost time present in the now.
Sugimoto takes a photograph of that "photograph-like thing."
Then something strange happens. What was clearly a museum set to the naked eye begins to look like a real photograph of wild animals or prehistoric humans when it becomes a photograph. When you multiply a simulation by a simulation, for some reason it becomes realistic—just like a movie shot in a studio.
The "Portraits" series has the same structure. He photographs wax figures—a three-dimensional storage medium—as if the person themselves had come to the studio.
"This is a portrait of Henry VIII."
No, no, Henry VIII died hundreds of years before photography was invented (laughs).
"But the photo is right here."
If discussed as photographic theory, it could be a grand story about inverting the evidentiary nature of photography—the "that-has-been." But if you extract just the core of the idea:
"If I take a photo of a photo, won't it look real?"
It's a very basic play. In Sugimoto's case, when this silly idea is executed with extremely high precision, it directly becomes a philosophical problem.
This is because what Sugimoto is really photographing is not the mammoth or Henry VIII themselves. I think at the center of his work has always been a doubt: "Does history really exist in the past? Or is it being constructed from the present toward the past?"
We cannot see the past itself. Museum dioramas, wax figures, photographs, art history, captions, appraisals, display cases. When we look at the past, we always go through some kind of device. And we look at the image presented by that device as "this is the past," thinking it is the past itself.
Therefore, what Sugimoto is photographing is "the device itself that we use when we look at the past," and he passes that device through another device called photography. A diorama that was clearly a fabrication in the museum starts to look like a "record of the past" the moment it becomes a photograph.
This is not a simple exposure of a fake. It is to take the device that creates historical reality and show it outside of that device. For Sugimoto, past and present, authentic and fake, are not so clearly separated from the start.
And this problem leads directly to his later "Seascapes," ancient art, and representations of Japan.
Photographing a Whole Movie in One Frame
In the "Theaters" series, it becomes even easier to understand.
He keeps the camera shutter open for the entire duration of a movie. A movie is an image created by a large number of still images flowing in chronological order.
Conversely, what happens if you put all of that into a single photograph? The screen becomes pure white. When he photographed a whole movie, nothing was recorded.
It's almost a one-liner joke. However, the resulting pure white screen looks like a white painting by Malevich. As a result of thoroughly adding up a massive amount of movie images, the images disappear, and the pure plane that modernism dreamed of appears.
I think Sugimoto has this habit of "taking metaphors literally."
Condensing time into a single frame, photographing people from the past, photographing ancient landscapes in the present.
Where one would normally speak in concepts, he says, "Well then, let's actually try it."
This looks very Tamori-like to me. Tamori is also strangely knowledgeable about subjects like railways, topography, languages, jazz, and slopes. However, rather than presenting that knowledge as venerable education, he finds the gaps or strange logic within the knowledge and plays with them.
Sugimoto is quite similar. He knows photography history, ancient art, architecture, Shinto, Noh, and mathematics deeply. But he doesn't just pile up knowledge as authority; he twists it once, saying, "So, in short, it's like this, right?"
The Core of Tamori-ness is "Doing Fakes with Precision"
The Tamori-ness I'm talking about here isn't just about his character. It's easy to understand if you think about Tamori's early performances.
For example, "Hanamogera" is not a real foreign language. However, it was a performance of creating a fake that sounds like a foreign language by extracting only the rhythm, intonation, and gestures that are the core of "foreign-language-ness." The four-language mahjong is the same. He doesn't speak actual languages; he exaggerates and reconstructs acoustic signs like "Chinese-ness," "Korean-ness," and "French-ness."
Tamori has long been doing this: not imitating the real thing, but extracting what makes the real thing feel real and creating a fake with just that.
Isn't this almost the same as "Dioramas"?
Sugimoto also doesn't photograph the "real ancient times" (or rather, he can't); instead, he photographs the "ancient-ness" created by the museum. Then, by passing it through the device of photography, that "ness" is reinforced, and it becomes more real than the real thing.
Hanamogera is a simulacrum of a foreign language, and "Dioramas" is a simulacrum of the past. Both are fakes, but they aren't interesting because they are fakes. By creating a fake, they expose what "authenticity" is made of. This is the first Tamori-like quality.
The other is "impersonation." Tamori sometimes describes himself as an "impersonator." In fact, his performances consistently have the character of someone who is neither an expert nor a party involved, but who acquires the form with abnormal precision and enters into it.
Sugimoto's work can also be rearranged as impersonations.
Impersonating an ancient person to look at the sea. Impersonating a court photographer to photograph wax figures. Impersonating a nature photographer to photograph museum dioramas. Impersonating a successor to ancient architecture to build a shrine. Impersonating a successor to Japanese traditional culture to construct "Nippon."
By doing the impersonation perfectly, he makes the real thing wobble from its foundation.
Incidentally, I think there is also a similarity to "Buratamori." Reconstructing the past by tracing traces such as slopes, culverts, stone walls, and elevation differences from the present visible before one's eyes is nothing other than reassembling an invisible past from the indexes left in the present. I think this is quite close to the "device" story I wrote above.
"Seascapes" is Also a Pretty Big Tall Tale
I think "Seascapes," which looks particularly sublime among Sugimoto's works, is actually quite suspicious.
Sugimoto asks if it's possible to photograph the same scenery today that prehistoric humans saw. Land has become cities or the topography has changed. Then what about the sea? Isn't the sea the same as what ancient people saw and what I am seeing now? So he goes to seas all over the world and takes photographs that divide the sky and the sea almost exactly in the middle.
But think about it carefully. You want to say, "There's no way that's true."
The conditions surrounding vision itself are different for ancient and modern people. We know the Earth is a sphere, and we look at the horizon with knowledge of optics and geography. We also know about the medium of photography. Even if it's the same scene, we are not "seeing" the same thing.
Therefore, Sugimoto's idea that "this is the same sea that ancient people saw" is a pretty big tall tale. Sugimoto himself knows this full well. A person who has photographed the mechanism of the "device" in dioramas cannot be unaware of the historical nature of vision.
Knowing it's a tall tale, Sugimoto finishes it thoroughly with a large-format camera and silver gelatin prints. Then, it really starts to look like a sea that has continued eternally from ancient times.
Instead of exposing the lie, he creates the appearance of truth itself by realizing the lie with the highest quality.
I think Sugimoto's background as an antique dealer is quite related to this feeling.
Antique Dealers Know How "Authenticity" is Made
Antiques are, in a sense, a world of grand tall tales.
This doesn't mean selling fakes. However, the value of ancient art is not determined by the material alone.
Who made it? When was it made? Who owned it? Which box was it kept in? Who appraised it? Which exhibition was it in?
Provenance accumulates around the object, and that creates its value in the present.
Authenticity certainly has a material basis, but "historical value" itself is not contained within the object as a natural ingredient. We in the present create meaning about the past and connect it to the object.
Antique dealers see this constantly at the site of their business. So it may be natural that Sugimoto doesn't treat authentic and fake as a simple binary opposition.
To give an example, the Go'o Shrine in Naoshima. It is not a restoration of history as it has remained since ancient times. While combining fragments such as stone, light, sea, Shinto architecture, and underground spaces, it newly creates a "Japan that might have been here since long ago." Even though it is a historically reconstructed fake, the resulting space is incredibly authentic-looking.
The fake becomes the original. This is exactly the same structure as "Dioramas."
The "Japan" Sugimoto Creates for Overseas
And what is important in Sugimoto's recent work is the "Japan" presented to overseas audiences.
Noh, shrines, ancient art, stones, moss, the sea, shadows, margins. A large number of signs that foreigners easily recognize as "NIPPON" are used.
It's as calculated as Minami Tanaka.
Because there's no way Sugimoto himself is unaware of that gaze. But I don't think this calculation is simple pandering.
It's easy to understand if you think about the "NIPPON" that overseas tourists expect when they go to Kyoto. There are rock gardens. There is moss. There are old wooden buildings. The light through the shoji screens is faint, and then the shishi-odoshi (bamboo water fountain) and the silence that follows. It is Zen.
But these should be quite different from the daily lives of modern Japanese people. Shishi-odoshi and moss gardens do not exist in the daily lives of ordinary Japanese people. They are made of drugstores, Yoshinoya, Daiso, convenience stores, and Aeon Malls.
Just because they aren't in the daily lives of Japanese people doesn't mean that rock gardens and moss gardens are fake Japanese culture, of course. Culture itself is created by selecting specific elements from the countless things that have existed since the past, presenting them repeatedly, and continuing to say, "This is who we are." In that sense, the NIPPON consumed by overseas tourists is a fake in a way, but at the same time, it is a Nippon that functions in reality.
Sugimoto seems to be utilizing this structure quite a bit. He recreates the "NIPPON" that the overseas market expects with an abnormally high level of quality. Not a shabby tourism-poster-like Japonisme, but a person who has seen a massive amount of the real thing as an antique dealer thoroughly refines everything from the choice of stones, materials, architecture, light, to historical citations.
As a result, a "Japan-like Japan" is created that is overwhelmingly superior to the "Cool Japan" style cultural facilities that governments tend to handle. It is an authentic fake NIPPON.
Being a fake and being crude are not synonymous. In Sugimoto's case, he creates fakes that are too exquisite. When a fake is too exquisite, the act of distinguishing it from the real thing itself becomes irrelevant.
It's the feeling of saying with a straight face, "This is real," while laughingly throwing out the question, "But what is 'real' in the first place?"
This, too, is "Dioramas." If you photograph artificial nature perfectly, it becomes a real nature photograph. If you perfectly create an artificially constructed Japan, it becomes "Japan itself."
Sugimoto does not denounce the simulacrum; he joyfully creates the simulacrum.
That is Why He is "Tamori in the Guise of Daisetz Suzuki"
When you think this far, the current kyoka (comic poems) don't seem like such outliers. For a long time, we have viewed Hiroshi Sugimoto as a quite profound artist.
The sea, time, Noh, In'ei Raisan (In Praise of Shadows).
That is precisely why Sugimoto has been highly evaluated overseas as "Japanese" and "Zen-like." He is completely wearing the skin of Daisetz Suzuki.
No, if we take the impersonation theory into account, saying he is "wearing the skin" might be too mild. He is Tamori impersonating Daisetz Suzuki.
However, even if it is an impersonation, I think Sugimoto is probably serious. He believes, but he doesn't believe. He is playing Daisetz to the full with a unique distance.
"Dioramas," "Portraits," "Theaters," and "Seascapes."
If you reduce them to just the ideas, they are rather grand jokes. What's amazing about Sugimoto is that he doesn't stop the joke halfway out of embarrassment.
The best photography techniques, the best materials. He even builds architecture and dedicates Noh performances.
He invests enormous resources into silly questions. A one-liner joke becomes photographic theory, time theory, and Japan theory.
So, I think it's a bit backward to get angry at these kyoka, saying, "Why would an artist of Hiroshi Sugimoto's caliber do something so cringeworthy?"
The kyoka themselves are not interesting.
Cringe is cringe.
But that is typical of Hiroshi Sugimoto.
He has never separated profundity from silliness.
It's just that until now, the joke was hidden inside perfect silver gelatin photographs.
This time, he put it into words himself and brought it to the surface. That's why it's cringey.
If viewed as a work, it's philosophy, but when put into words, it becomes a dad joke. That gap is, in fact, Hiroshi Sugimoto.
The audience has until now read "eternity," "impermanence," "Zen," and "time" from his works, treating Sugimoto as Daisetz Suzuki. However, he himself wrote kyoka from the side, exposing the Tamori component by saying, "Actually, this work is this kind of pun to begin with."
That's why he is disliked.
He didn't lower the quality of the work; Sugimoto himself stripped away the aura of the "profound Hiroshi Sugimoto" that viewers had bestowed upon his works. The *kyoka* don't function at all for the illustrations; rather, they are a complete drag. But I think that is Sugimoto's intention.
Even the Way He Sheds His Skin is Calculated
This is why I wrote at the beginning that "the flaming is also part of the old fox's scheme."
These kyoka do not have English translations. I bought the catalog, and as expected, the kyoka parts were not translated into English.
There were many foreign visitors at the venue. They will likely skip over this silliness without noticing it and continue to treat Sugimoto as Daisetz Suzuki as before. The product "profound Hiroshi Sugimoto" for the overseas market is not damaged at all.
Only those who understand Japanese can read the explanation. In other words, Sugimoto did not shed his skin entirely. While keeping the skin on for overseas audiences, he showed the face of the sophisticated, argumentative, dad-joke-loving middle-aged man inside only to Japanese speakers.
And the correct reaction to a dad joke is to be "totally put off." Because if you aren't put off, you can't be a drag on the illustrations. And even if the kyoka were translated into English, it would be problematic if foreigners, who don't have the set behavior of being put off by dad jokes, were strangely impressed.
In other words, he has designed what to show to which audience. Just as an antique dealer manages the box inscription and the contents separately. What else can you call this but a "scheme"?
As early as 2005, Akira Asada praised Sugimoto as the "Hegel of photography history" while also writing that he is "as stubborn and sophisticated as a rakugo storyteller." It is a profound and elegant vocabulary typical of Asada, but in short, it means "he is an entertainer at heart (in a good way)."
There is another interesting story from Akira Asada. When special materials for silver gelatin photography were being discontinued one after another due to digitalization, Sugimoto reportedly said with a cool face:
"That means there are only two choices: either quit photography or buy Kodak."
A single medium called photography is about to end historically. Where an ordinary artist would start a serious cultural theory, he replies, "Then just buy Kodak." His answers are always down-to-earth and playful.
After all, he is Tamori in the guise of Daisetz Suzuki.
I'd even like to see what he would do if he bought Kodak.
