The world contains a vast amount of different possibilities. Some of those possibilities have been created into existence or has yet to be discovered. To make sense of the world we are living in, society has discovered or created various ways.
One example is the measurement of time. It is one of the many standards heavily relied on by humans. Time is used to document the past, to keep track of events that are occurring in the present, and to set up goals or plans for the future.
Because society heavily depends on time—does that mean is time real? Time is set up by day and night that defines this sense of motion that we are moving. Although that is true, there is another idea that we, as humans, are the reason for that motion. In a sense, we are the agents of causality.
Following Hiroshi Sugimoto’s philosophical ideas of time―the concept of time as causality is represented through light and shadow. Light representing the “source” of the cause and shadow representing the “result” of the cause. And in-between those two substances, there is a “body” that represents the ongoing present.
Through these ideas, I hope to convey the idea that society is the agent of the “past” and the “present” that produces an effect in the future. I noticed that Hiroshi Sugimoto photographed many of his work in museums, so I decided to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to do the same. However, I tried as much as possible not to include the work of art itself, but an emphasis on the shapes and forms created by art and architecture present in the building.
“To me photography functions as a fossilization of time."
—Hiroshi Sugimoto
—Hiroshi Sugimoto