Hiroshi Sugimoto, Pace Gallery - exhibition review

Hiroshi Sugimoto is a photography phenomenon. The Japanese artist worked in scattered sessions between 1976 and 2012 at New York’s American Museum of Natural History on what he called "windows into nature". His subject was dioramas — three-dimensional museum displays with detailed backdrops of mountains, deserts and forests which support narratives built around posed, taxidermied animals. Sugimoto photographed these constructed displays, creating an existential link between the animals' imagined deaths and the moment of a camera's click, as this exhibition of 17 large black-and-white pictures shows.

With his technical mastery of angles, lighting and long exposures, Sugimoto makes the artificial settings seem realistic. The earliest photograph in the series, Polar Bear (1976), showcases his ability to breathe life into a fake scene as a hungry-looking bear appears to approach a dead seal on an ice floe. Alaskan Wolves (1994) transforms the original, soft diorama into a bright photograph of almost authentic living animals with sharply focused shades of fur.

Sugimoto’s work from his most recent shoot in 2012, Cactus fields in Arizona and Forests, Oregon and Northern Spruce-Fir Forest, lack animals and show the artist’s interest in landscapes and the environment.