The Oceanic Vision of Sugimoto Hiroshi. Issue 2 (2nd April 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Petitto, Joshua
• Is Part Of: History of photography. Volume 40:Issue 2(2016)
• Page Start: 107
• Page End: 128
• Publication Date: 2016-04-02
• Subjects: Mishima Yukio (1925–70) -- Sugimoto Hiroshi (1948–) -- oceanic feeling -- modernity -- aesthetics -- ideology -- fascism; Photography -- History -- Periodicals; 770.905
• DOI: 10.1080/03087298.2016.1151623
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0308-7298

Abstract

Abstract : The artistic imagination of Sugimoto Hiroshi revolves around images of the oceanic intended, in their presentation of flat, open, and tranquil calm, to counter the forces of modernity and restore a sense of the religious in the profane. Sugimoto's oceanic vision, however, also draws upon elements of a politically regressive ideology that marked Japanese cultural productions in the 1930s which bound the hope of restoration to an aesthetics of death and repose. In this article, I illustrate how Sugimoto's oceanic vision disturbs this ideology even as it invokes the visual and rhetorical structures that marked its forms.