Time Exposed: Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Seascapes, on view at the Parrish Art Museum from September 13, 2025 through February 8, 2026, presents one of the most meditative bodies of work in contemporary photography. Drawn from a decade-long pursuit that began in 1980, this exhibition invites viewers to slow down and contemplate the elemental meeting of sea and sky, a horizon that has remained unchanged throughout human history. For Sugimoto, the ocean is both subject and metaphor, a timeless presence that anchors memory, perception, and being.
Traveling to distant coastlines across the globe, Sugimoto photographed oceans that have witnessed the passage of civilizations, wars, and migrations. From the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Adriatic to the Tasman Sea, each image shares the same restrained composition: water below, sky above, divided by a nearly perfect horizon line. Yet within this apparent sameness lies infinite variation. Shifts in light, atmosphere, and weather transform each photograph into a unique meditation on time and impermanence.
Using a large-format, nineteenth-century camera and black-and-white film, Sugimoto embraces a deliberately traditional photographic process. Long exposures allow subtle movements of water and air to register on the film, creating images that feel suspended between stillness and motion. Some seascapes appear crystalline and sharply defined, while others dissolve into mist, where sea and sky nearly merge. The absence of land, figures, or man-made elements intensifies the sense of quiet and encourages a contemplative mode of viewing.
Seen together, the fifty-one photolithographs form a visual rhythm rather than a linear narrative. Repetition becomes a tool for reflection, reminding viewers that while the world accelerates, certain experiences remain constant.
Time Exposed: Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Seascapes offers not spectacle, but solace—an encounter with the sublime that reconnects us to nature’s enduring presence and to photography’s capacity to reveal the profound within the seemingly simple.
Image:
Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, b. 1948). Sea of Japan, Oki, 1987, photolithograph, 9 ½ x 12 in. Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, New York, Gift of the Joy of Giving Something, Inc., 2022.7.73. © Hiroshi Sugimoto