Hiroshi Sugimoto: Time Machine at The Hayward Gallery review

Hiroshi Sugimoto’s awe-inspiring photographs are currently on display at the Hayward Gallery. It is the largest survey to date of this artist in the UK and it is spellbinding, some rooms much more than others. For over 50 years, Sugimoto has been creating multiple extraordinary, enigmatic photographic series playing with light and dark, life and death, and these are all now on display for us to admire and question what is truth and what is not.

Installation view of Hiroshi Sugimoto, Theatre series. Gelatin silver prints. Image credit: Mark Blower. Courtesy the artist and the Hayward Gallery.

Using 19th century photographic practices, large-format wooden cameras, he has been photographing everything from dioramas (which you would actually think are real live animals and not stuffed and in museums), theatres (the grand cinemas he captured for over five decades, his most exceptional and magical series), seascapes (his extremely soothing series), space, maths, wax figures and horror scenes (which the two latter were amongst my least favourite!) to name a few. This exhibition shows us, through all these different series, his incredibly intense attitude to photography, one which is magical, calming, exciting, wild, scientific, and simply beautiful all at the same time.

Image: Installation view of Hiroshi Sugimoto, Conceptual Forms and Mathematical Model 006. Gelatin silver prints, aluminium and steel. Photo: Mark Blower. Courtesy the artist.

I would say that Theatres, Mathematical Models and Seascapes were my favourites amongst the photographs and I would return to see even if only to once again stand in front of his Theatres. Cinemas, grand American cinemas, he shot each with an exposure which lasted the duration of the entire film. According to Sugimoto “to watch a two-hour movie is simply to look at 172,800 photographic images. I wanted to photograph a movie, with all its appearance of life and motion, in order to stop it again.” He then went on to try this at drive-ins, opera houses, abandoned cinemas, derelict ones, locations where life and love still existed in, and this series is absolutely marvellous. You have to see the Theatres to truly understand what I mean! 

Date: 11 October 2023-7 January 2024; Opening Hours: Wednesday-Friday 10am-6pm, Saturday 10am-8pm, Sunday 10am-6pm, closed Monday-Tuesday; Location: Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre,  Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XX; Price: £18, concessions available. Book now.

Words by Massoumeh Safinia