Seascape: Aegean Sea, Pillon 1990

Curator: Well, hello there! This is “Seascape: Aegean Sea, Pillon,” a photograph by Hiroshi Sugimoto, taken in 1990. Quite minimal, isn’t it? Editor: My first thought is pure, distilled serenity. It’s a monochrome whisper, like a visual mantra, or when looking at ancient icons depicting celestial light that blend water and air in divine embrace. Curator: It certainly pulls you into a contemplative space. I’m curious about how Sugimoto renders the familiar image of the sea, it flirts with abstraction while grounding itself in a reality. Editor: Yes, I see that pull toward abstraction as a deep dive into symbolism. Light, in many traditions, signifies the divine. Water represents the source of life. Here, in the Aegean, a cradle of civilization, these primordial elements are brought together. The symbolism carries an emotional weight across centuries. The soft gradiation of light into darkness evokes our eternal return from the known to the void, similar to Hades in Ancient Greek belief systems, mirroring heaven and hell. Curator: Exactly! The picture flattens time somehow. His method, using long exposures, nearly obliterates details to uncover a certain… essence. A timeless moment! It challenges our perception. Editor: That erasure of detail speaks to the iconographer in me. It reminds me of deliberately “faded” icons or devotional objects meant to bypass our immediate understanding of a subject matter so as to appeal to a shared visual memory of our history of human experience. Think of an artist painting with their cultural inheritance in mind. The use of the gradient in this artwork also has roots in a range of ancient artistic methods used across traditions. Curator: That's interesting. Is it because you are more drawn to visual symbolism? Editor: Yes. The continuous presence of light and darkness being used to denote good and evil transcends culture. Sugimoto is speaking to this visual language without saying a word. What about you? What emotions did you feel upon seeing it? Curator: Intrigue. Perhaps it’s my constant search for novelty. It brings stillness but prompts a certain level of philosophical inquiry and re-evaluation. You could easily fall into a melancholic place when confronting infinity as well as beauty. Editor: An interesting contrast! I found an unyielding sense of hope from this piece. Perhaps both beauty and melancholy exist in unison, much like these tonal gradiations dancing on the sea's surface.