Lightning Fields 227

Recognised for his iconic photographic series capturing museum dioramas, seascape horizons and cinema theatres, Hiroshi Sugimoto is a pioneering artist who has been experimenting with the possibilities of photography as a medium to capture light for over forty years. Born in Tokyo in 1948, Sugimoto moved to the United States of America in 1972 to study fine art in Los Angeles before basing himself in New York in 1974, while always maintaining a studio in Tokyo.

Lightning Fields 227, 2009, was made without a camera. Sugimoto places a large sheet of film on a metal plate and uses a wand or conductor in combination with a Van de Graaff generator to discharge 400,000 volts onto the surface to create his unique images of an electrical current, which appear like bolts of lightning. Creating conditions similar to an electrical storm in his darkroom, Sugimoto has harnessed dangerous natural forces to produce his striking images. A truly powerful work, Lightning Fields 227 not only makes visible 400,000 volts of electricity and captures Sugimoto’s experimental photographic technique, it also speaks to the history of photography and science.

Sugimoto’s black-and-white Lightning Fields series was inspired by William Henry Fox Talbot, the inventor of the negative/positive photographic process. It is as much about an attempt to capture pure light on a surface as it is about revealing invisible currents of electricity.

Leigh Robb, Curator of Contemporary Art