The eeriness of the copy: Sugimoto's portraits of wax figures
At first glance, Hiroshi Sugimoto's photographic portrait of King Henry
VIII of England is arresting: Sugimoto's camera has captured the
tactility of Henry's furs and silks, the elaborate embroidery of his
doublet, the light reflecting off of each shimmering jewel. The contours
of the king's face are so lifelike that he appears to be almost
three-dimensional. It seems as though the 21st-century artist has
traveled back in time nearly 500 years to photograph his royal subject.
But Sugimoto's portraits of historical figures are fictions, at least
twice removed from their subjects, made by photographing a wax figure
that has been created by a sculptor from either a photographic portrait
or a painted one. Sugimoto shoots his subjects in black and white,
posing the "sitter" against a black background, amplifying the illusion
that we are viewing a contemporary portrait in which the subject has
stepped out of history.
This volume presents the photographer's images of the wax figures
alongside a selection of portraits of living subjects and photographs of
memento mori. As with his other major bodies of work--Dioramas,
Seascapes and Theaters--Sugimoto's Portraits address the passage
of time and history, and question the nature of the "reality" captured
by the camera. Hiroshi Sugimoto: Portraits is the fourth in a series
of books on Sugimoto's major bodies of work and presents 70 photographs,
7 of which have never before been published.
Hiroshi Sugimoto (born 1948) has helped define what it means to be a
multidisciplinary contemporary artist, his photographs blurring the
lines between photography, painting, installation and architecture.
Sugimoto divides his time between Tokyo and New York City.
