Review Hiroshi Sugimoto: Lightning Fields, Photographic Drawing Scottish National Galleries of Modern Art While Nathan Coley’s ‘There Will Be No Miracles Here’ still proudly welcomes the visitors to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, its current temporary exhibition refutes this claim; indeed, ironically, it is centred around scientific miracles. Hiroshi Sugimoto’s mythical work illustrates the invisible and resurrects the dead. This exhibition sees Sugimoto play the role of an artist, a photographer, a scientist, an explorer, a magician and a conceptual thinker, travelling back to the very origins of photography. The show consists of two parts, both of which cradle the neglected infants of photographic experimentation brought to life by Henry Fox Talbot: The first part, Lightning Fields, is an impressive outcome of Fox Talbot’s early experiments with static electricity produced using a Van der Graaff generator to induce violent electrical discharges onto photographic film. The resulting images reveal the extraordinary effect of light particles, not visible to the human eye, forming dramatic bolt shapes striking from the darkness of the massive prints’ background and darting across the picture plane. These images capture split seconds of light and freeze them in time; they play with the notion of seizing the invisible, the elusive and the obscure.   In another series, Photographic Drawing, Sugimoto breathes life into the 160-year-old souls of original, possibly never developed, negatives by Henry Fox Talbot. These beautifully dark, phantom-like, lacy, fragile Victorian images reveal forgotten moments in time, now transmitted through old shadows, which haunt the rooms of the Gallery of Modern Art. Seemingly tranquil, these photographs carry a certain evocative power. Extreme risk was involved in using the ancient negatives as they were in great danger of changing if exposed to even the slightest source of light. Sugimoto takes the risk and returns to the very origins of photography in order to finally see the positive images of some of the first negatives ever made. However different in terms of aesthetics and the created ambience, conceptually. both halves of the show go hand in hand. Sugimoto penetrates the subconscious and praises the obscured, the ignored and the seemingly non-existant. Both parts of the show not only capture the moment in time, but enhance its importance and uniqueness. In addition, they magnify the power of exhilaration, fear and excitement related to risk of exploring the enigma. The uncertainty dabbled in in creating the images from Fox Talbot’s original negatives is comparable with that of waiting for a message from Delphi’s Oracle. The ambiguity of the revealed messages echo across the gallery. Perhaps it might have benefitted the viewer, however, to see these two different discoveries, these messages (represented by the splitting of the aesthetic of the show into two halves) displayed within two distinct spheres. Mixing the results of two different experiments by installing them in a cross-channelling way results in an emotional and aesthetic rivalry between the dynamics of the first impression and novelty of Lighting Fields and the tranquillity of resurrecting the dead in Photographic Drawing; but then again who are we to dictate as to the order we see miracles caught in. ____ Agnes Gryczkowska 

Review

Hiroshi Sugimoto:

Lightning Fields, Photographic Drawing

Scottish National Galleries of Modern Art

While Nathan Coley’s ‘There Will Be No Miracles Here’ still proudly welcomes the visitors to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, its current temporary exhibition refutes this claim; indeed, ironically, it is centred around scientific miracles. Hiroshi Sugimoto’s mythical work illustrates the invisible and resurrects the dead.

This exhibition sees Sugimoto play the role of an artist, a photographer, a scientist, an explorer, a magician and a conceptual thinker, travelling back to the very origins of photography. The show consists of two parts, both of which cradle the neglected infants of photographic experimentation brought to life by Henry Fox Talbot: The first part, Lightning Fields, is an impressive outcome of Fox Talbot’s early experiments with static electricity produced using a Van der Graaff generator to induce violent electrical discharges onto photographic film. The resulting images reveal the extraordinary effect of light particles, not visible to the human eye, forming dramatic bolt shapes striking from the darkness of the massive prints’ background and darting across the picture plane. These images capture split seconds of light and freeze them in time; they play with the notion of seizing the invisible, the elusive and the obscure.  

In another series, Photographic Drawing, Sugimoto breathes life into the 160-year-old souls of original, possibly never developed, negatives by Henry Fox Talbot. These beautifully dark, phantom-like, lacy, fragile Victorian images reveal forgotten moments in time, now transmitted through old shadows, which haunt the rooms of the Gallery of Modern Art. Seemingly tranquil, these photographs carry a certain evocative power. Extreme risk was involved in using the ancient negatives as they were in great danger of changing if exposed to even the slightest source of light. Sugimoto takes the risk and returns to the very origins of photography in order to finally see the positive images of some of the first negatives ever made.

However different in terms of aesthetics and the created ambience, conceptually. both halves of the show go hand in hand. Sugimoto penetrates the subconscious and praises the obscured, the ignored and the seemingly non-existant. Both parts of the show not only capture the moment in time, but enhance its importance and uniqueness. In addition, they magnify the power of exhilaration, fear and excitement related to risk of exploring the enigma. The uncertainty dabbled in in creating the images from Fox Talbot’s original negatives is comparable with that of waiting for a message from Delphi’s Oracle. The ambiguity of the revealed messages echo across the gallery.

Perhaps it might have benefitted the viewer, however, to see these two different discoveries, these messages (represented by the splitting of the aesthetic of the show into two halves) displayed within two distinct spheres. Mixing the results of two different experiments by installing them in a cross-channelling way results in an emotional and aesthetic rivalry between the dynamics of the first impression and novelty of Lighting Fields and the tranquillity of resurrecting the dead in Photographic Drawing; but then again who are we to dictate as to the order we see miracles caught in.

____

Agnes Gryczkowska 

Notes

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