LOT Phillips de Pury & Company  /  PHOTOGRAPHS PART I  / 

63

HIROSHI SUGIMOTO (Japanese, b. 1948) TRI-CITY DRIVE-IN, SAN BERNARDINO, CALIFORNIA title, editio...

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HIROSHI SUGIMOTO (Japanese, b. 1948) TRI-CITY DRIVE-IN, SAN BERNARDINO, CALIFORNIA title, editio...
HIROSHI SUGIMOTO (Japanese, b. 1948) TRI-CITY DRIVE-IN, SAN BERNARDINO, CALIFORNIA title, edition and number "TRI-CITY DRIVE-IN, 5/25, 731" engraved below image "Tri-City Drive-in San Bernardino, 1993, 5/25, 731" inscribed by artist in pencil on mount below engraving gelatin silver print image: 16 9/16 x 21 3/8 in. (42.1 x 54.3 cm) paper: 19 1/4 x 23 13/16 in. (48.9 x 58.9 cm) mount: 19 7/8 x 25 15/16 in. (50.5 x 65.9 cm) 1993 this print is number 5 from an edition of 25 PROVENANCE Rose Gallery, LOS ANGELES Private Collection, CALIFORNIA LITERATURE Thomas Kellein, TIME EXPOSED, LONDON, 1995, p. 57 (illustrated) Peter Hay Halpert, SUGIMOTO: MOTION PICTURE, Locarno, 1995, n.p. (illustrated) Hans Belting, THEATERS: HIROSHI SUGIMOTO, New York, 2000, p. 199 (illustrated) "We used to think that photography is about space, as film is about time" (Belting, p. 3). Sugimoto challenges this concept in his series of photographs taken at movie theaters (see Lot 156) and drive-ins. It is Sugimoto's process in relationship to his subject that he is able to explore the paradoxes of time and temporality. Sugimoto leaves the shutter of his camera open for the duration of a movie being projected on the theater screens. What appears in final photographic form is a rectangle of glowing light against the dark surroundings of the theater. This technique is reminiscent of 19th-century processes, when images required longer exposure times to register on plates or papers. This nostalgic approach is very much combined with "a postmodern usage of the medium, in which the photograph carries an expanded amount of information" (Halpert, n.p.). Sugimoto's subjects also comment on time past and present. The first drive-in theater appeared in 1933, but by 1958, there were more than 4,000 drive-ins in the U.S. The drive-in was a major part of contemporary culture, but today there are less than 850 functional drive-in theaters. Again, a sense of nostalgia is evoked by the representation of the drive-in, where memories so often originated for those in Sugimoto's generation and slightly older. The screen and the space, which in this case includes a playground, remain hauntingly empty, a reminder of rapid changes in our culture.
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