Slide 1
A long exposure gathers light over time
A photograph gathers light over an interval. A long exposure can make elapsed time part of the image rather than freezing a brief instant.
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Hiroshi Sugimoto has used long exposures to investigate time. The result depends on what happens during the interval, not only on what was present when the camera began recording.
Slide 2
Sugimoto exposed some theatre photographs for a whole movie
Sugimoto describes photographing a projected movie for its entire duration. Many successive screen images accumulate within one still photograph.
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Individual scenes no longer remain separately readable on the screen. The method converts a narrative sequence into accumulated light, changing what information the photograph preserves.
Slide 3
The luminous screen sits within the surrounding architecture
In Sugimoto's theatre images, the screen is encountered within an architectural setting. The photograph relates a luminous field to the room around it.
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For his Opera House project, he installed screens in classical theatres that did not already have them. The photographed arrangement was deliberately prepared for the work.
Slide 4
Opera House titles identify films the image may not reveal
A long-exposure image may not reveal which film supplied its light. Sugimoto's Opera House titles add information about the projected movie.
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He describes using summaries of the films for the titles. Text thus restores a narrative reference that the accumulated exposure has made visually inaccessible.
Slide 5
Duration can be a deliberate photographic choice
Theatre exposures show that a photograph need not preserve a single recognisable moment. Duration can become a material and conceptual choice.
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SFMOMA places this work within Sugimoto's broader investigation of time. The long exposure is an artistic method, not simply a technical obstacle that faster cameras would solve.
Sources
- Opera House
Hiroshi Sugimoto
- Hiroshi Sugimoto
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art