8oinks

As a conceptual photographer often heavily invested in his process, Hiroshi Sugimoto has always been interested in photography’s ability to capture light as well as the medium’s capacity to frame and objectify its subject. In Lightning Fields, Sugimoto references the history of photography by pursuing two distinct projects related to William Henry Fox Talbot - inventor of the photographic negative. The first part is Sugimoto’s literal and meticulous reprinting of two of Talbot’s botanical photograms while the second is inspired by the pioneer’s explorations with electricity.

In Lightning Fields, Sugimoto plays with the tenuousness of positive and negative by purposefully incorporating electrical charges as part of the photographic process. Without a camera, Sugimoto applies a Van de Graaff 400,000-volt generator to his large negatives to create photogram-like records of transitory sparks and static electricity.

This richly layered process creates works that, in the tradition of Talbot before him, elegantly blur the boundary between science and photography. (read more at Shotgun)

see also 7 Days 7 Nights