© 2009, Hiroshi Sugimoto
Currently not on view
Lightning Fields 144,
2009
Hiroshi Sugimoto 杉本博司, born 1948, Tokyo, Japan; active Tokyo and New York, NY
2010-123
The branching forms in Sugimoto’s Lightning Fields series are the imprint of an electrical current on photographic film. In a darkened studio, the artist places a large sheet of film on a metal surface; nearby, a Van de Graaff generator accumulates up to forty thousand volts of power. Eventually, the electricity surges across the sheet. When chemically developed, the film reveals the unpredictable, splintering paths taken by the electrical charge. Sugimoto determines an 8-by-10‐inch segment of the film to cut out, enlarge, and print like a conventional camera negative. Here the process and the artist’s discernment result in a composition that simulates a sublime natural scene: a moonlit landscape in which two trees stand under a sky of feathery clouds.
Information
Title
Lightning Fields 144
Dates
2009
Maker
Medium
Gelatin silver print
Dimensions
image: 58.4 x 47 cm. (23 x 18 1/2 in.)
sheet: 60.3 x 48.9 cm. (23 3/4 x 19 1/4 in.)
mat: 63.5 x 50.8 cm. (25 x 20 in.)
Credit Line
Museum purchase, Fowler McCormick, Class of 1921, Fund
Object Number
2010-123
Inscription
Signed in graphite on mat
Culture
Techniques
