Introducing Hiroshi Sugimoto
Art of Photographing Time
July 16
Written By Robert Niemeier
Time, Stillness, and Presence: What I Learned from Hiroshi Sugimoto
I did not arrive at photography through conceptual art. I arrived through places.
Roads through Monument Valley. Quiet mornings beside rivers. Rain-soaked streets in Prague. Snow-covered landscapes in Colorado. Empty spaces where weather, light, and memory seem to linger.
Yet the longer I photograph, the more I find myself returning to ideas explored by Hiroshi Sugimoto.
On the surface, our work looks very different. Sugimoto is known for minimalist black-and-white images created with large-format cameras and carefully controlled processes. My work often embraces color, atmosphere, weather, and the emotional possibilities of place.
But beneath those differences, I find common ground.
Sugimoto's photographs are often described as being about time. I think many of my photographs are as well.
When I photograph Shiprock in Enduring Silence, I am not simply documenting a geological feature. I am trying to communicate a feeling of permanence that extends beyond the moment I pressed the shutter.
When I photograph puddle reflections in the Southwest, such as Stillness After Rain, I am interested in the brief moment when the landscape becomes something else—when stone, sky, and water seem suspended between reality and reflection.
In images like Before the City Wakes or Between Us, The Field, human presence becomes important precisely because it is small. The figures are not the subject in a traditional sense. They become a measure of scale, solitude, and time.
Sugimoto's work encourages me to slow down and ask a different question before making a photograph.
Not "What am I looking at?"
But "What am I experiencing?"
The answer is rarely a landmark or a location.
It is often silence.
It is anticipation.
It is the feeling that a place has existed long before I arrived and will remain long after I leave.
Many of my favorite photographs happen during transitional moments—before sunrise, after rain, during blue hour, or in changing weather. These are times when the world feels slightly less certain and slightly more reflective. Sugimoto's work has helped me appreciate that ambiguity.
Photography is frequently associated with decisive moments and dramatic events. Yet some of the photographs that stay with us longest are the quiet ones.
A horizon.
A road disappearing into distance.
A figure waiting.
A field beneath changing light.
Sugimoto's photographs remind us that stillness is not emptiness. It is presence.
That idea continues to shape the way I approach my own work. I am not trying to stop time. I am trying to create photographs that allow viewers to feel it.
