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From the archive
April 1984
On August 2, “Hiroshi Sugimoto: Time Machine,” the largest exhibition to date of the Japanese photographer’s work, opens at MCA Australia. To honor the occasion, Artforum revisits John Yau’s essay “Hiroshi Sugimoto: No Such Thing as Time,” published in the magazine’s April 1984 issue.
“Eschewing the more familiar possibilities of art-for-art’s-sake and anecdote, Sugimoto’s black and white images are metaphors: they demand interpretation,” Yau writes. The artist “knows that the way we understand our experience is to organize it, that all sight is tainted by culture, with the stress on artifice,” continues the critic. “Like a camera, memory is a device.” —The editors
“Eschewing the more familiar possibilities of art-for-art’s-sake and anecdote, Sugimoto’s black and white images are metaphors: they demand interpretation,” Yau writes. The artist “knows that the way we understand our experience is to organize it, that all sight is tainted by culture, with the stress on artifice,” continues the critic. “Like a camera, memory is a device.” —The editors
