Hiroshi Sugimoto at Hayward Gallery: curator introduction from Ralph Rugoff

Hayward Gallery Director Ralph Rugoff gives you an introductory video tour of Hiroshi Sugimoto, the largest survey to date of the photographer’s work, which ran at our Hayward Gallery from October 2023 to January 2024.

Offering expert insight into the work of the acclaimed photographer, Rugoff begins with a look at Polar Bear (1976), the first of Sugimoto’s Diorama series and the work which the photographer credits as beginning his life as an artist. 

Rugoff goes on to introduce Theaters, a series of work which saw Sugimoto set up his camera at the rear of New York movie theatres, and condense the films shown into a singular still image. The photographer would later replicate this approach through further series that saw him set up his camera in US drive-ins, European opera houses and, finally, abandoned theatres. We finish with an insight into the artist’s Portraits series, which sees waxworks seemingly brought back to life by the power of Sugimoto’s lens.

‘Hiroshi Sugimoto is constantly playing with the fact that photography is a medium that lends itself both to documenting, but also to invention. No-one has ever made photographs like these.’

Ralph Rugoff, Hayward Gallery Director

Lead image: Installation view of Hiroshi Sugimoto, Polar Bear, 1976. Silver gelatin print. Photo: Mark Blower. Courtesy the artist and the Hayward Gallery