Hiroshi Sugimoto Japanese, b. 1948

Hiroshi Sugimoto, born in Tokyo in 1948, is a photographer and multidisciplinary artist whose work probes the nature of time, memory, and perception. Sugimoto trained first in politics and sociology at Rikkyō University before turning to photography, retraining as an artist at the Art Center College of Design, Los Angeles, in 1974. Known for long exposures and meticulous craft, Sugimoto's images often feel suspended in a quiet beyond. Whether photographing empty theatres, seascapes unchanged for millennia, or wax figures stilled in time, his work invites a slow looking – a kind of meditation on duration and decay. Across decades, he has returned to the question of what it means to see, and what photography can preserve.

Sugimoto has exhibited extensively at institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the Serpentine Gallery, London. Public collections include the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), Barcelona; and Tate, London. Awards include the Japanese Medal of Honour with Purple Ribbon (2010), Japan’s Praemium Imperiale (2009) and the Hasselblad Foundation International Award (2001). Sugimoto divides his time between Tokyo and New York City.