Message from gjones

[Anonymous]

My wife and I recently spent a long weekend in San Francisco, and although we have been there many times before, we had made it a priority to accomplish my make-up work for missed seminar sessions. With this in mind, we travelled on Sunday, July 15th into wonderful Golden Gate Park to the new De Young Museum, specifically to the Herbst Exhibition Galleries, to view an exhibit of Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugimoto's eerie photographs. If you go to San Francisco and have the time or inclination, please make a point to check this place out- it is a wonderful museum in a gorgeous locale. Do not drive though, as it is not car accessible- we took the Bart bus from the Union Square area...one transfer and 30 minutes later we were deposited outside the building. Cost is $10 a person, and the museum is open from 9:30-5:15pm. Another travel tip: if you want affordable and funky digs, try staying at the Mark Twain Hotel.
Other than going to the Saturday Night Market in Chinatown, we had no concrete plans to fulfill my requirements. We travelled to Japantown, but honestly, there wasn't much going on and it seems like the area is becoming progressively more homogenized. There seem to be fewer and fewer Japanese-related businesses and cultural events each time I visit. Being thwarted, we looked in the SF Weekly and found the advertisement for the Sugimoto exhibit. I knew nothing of the man or his work prior to our visit.
Sugimoto is one of Japan's most celebrated photographers of the last 30 years, and his claim to fame is his use of black and white photography. There were certainly plenty of those on display. The museum is displaying a series of 120 of his photographs from the mid-1970's to the present day. The mid-70's work focused on static structures. There were several that are movie related- haunting shots of the interior of movie theatres (without patrons). One very striking photo was of a drive-in movie screen set against a black exterior. It looked like a night shot, but without the knowledge of the technique being used, it is hard to say for certain. The blank screen positively glowed in such fashion that if you stare at it it does take on a kind of magesterial beauty, and the philosophical implications become profound. If the screen itself can be rendered into something of such profound beauty, does it matter which )if any) images flow across it? Many of the photos showcased very mundane, yet intensely beautiful images. One area had a curved wall with special windows in it that offered views of Sugimoto's sea photographs. Once again, very simple in many respects. Shots of the ocean rendered in black and white (perhaps filtered or processed in different ways). The area was also dramatically lit to showcase the details in the photos. They were really quite eerie and serene at the same time- The power and physical sweep of the ocean was not the primary emphasis- although you do come away with an appreciation of that- as much as the shades and physical makeup of the waves themselves. I could imagine a Zen priest having a field day looking at these. The awesome power and tranquility of nature were both represented in the same shot- very similar thematically to some Japanese writers I have read.
One other area of interest were the seven photos taken from his work Portraits. Sugimoto travelled to Madame Tussaud's wax museum in London to photograph wax models of Henry VIII and his six wives. He then "remade" the images to make them resemble the paintings from which these figures were derived. Very odd. You swear you are looking at an ancient photograph, yet it is entirely reconstituted from a very 'non-artistic' source. The metaphorical and philosophical implications of this are profound. My wife summed it up very well when she said, "Why would anyone go to all of that trouble when they could just photograph the original source?" Excellent question.
We thoroughly enjoyed the exhibition and the museum itself. Sugimoto's photos are sparse, enchanting, and quite mysterious. I have never seen anything like them before. They seem to aspire to capture a kind of magical element that exists beneath the veneer of everyday life. Not knowing much about photography (virtually nothing), I think I was robbed of the true appreciation of the technique and mastery involved in his work, yet I appreciated the work on a different level. The photos aroused feelings that I have enountered when reading Borges. It was a great day.[Edit by="gjones on Jul 23, 10:49:37 PM"][/Edit]