In Praise of Shadows 2003

Hiroshi Sugimoto made this photograph, In Praise of Shadows, with light and chemicals. It's got this powerful, almost ghostly vertical form, just blazing white against a sea of black. I imagine Sugimoto in the darkroom, coaxing this image out of nothingness, like some kind of apparition. There's real drama to it. It makes me think about Ad Reinhardt who was exploring similar territory with his nearly-black paintings. It is all about tone and mood. Look at the way the light bleeds around the edges. It's soft, like a memory. It gives the picture an ethereal quality, like you could reach out and touch it and your hand would just pass right through. It's a trick of the light, of course, but the way it is captured is almost transcendent. Artists are always having this conversation, you know? They’re building on each other, remixing ideas, so it feels like they're always reaching out, across time.