Looking at the birdie: thoughts about posing for a portrait in Hiroshi Sugimoto's studio

The memorable day in Sugimoto's studio is gone, and we too will soon be gone--but while we are here, we want to say that we enjoyed the session in the studio, and we enjoy contemplating this trace of us. (Or is it a transformation?)

Anyone who has seen the nearly incredible detail and rich tonal gradations of a Sugimoto photograph, meticulously printed with his own hands, knows that indeed the work is handmade, despite its reliance on the techniques of mechanical reproduction. He signs his photographs on the mount, at the lower right, but the photograph itself is his real signature. Speaking of his first three series (dioramas, seascapes, theaters) he said in an interview:

My method is different from the one that most photographers use. I do not go around and shoot. I am not a hunter. I usually have a specific vision, just by myself.... If I have a vision my work is almost done. The rest is a technical problem. (6)

An awareness of the careful planning that goes into making a Sugimoto photograph is gained by reading his comment on how he makes his night seascapes, where to catch the passage of the moon's light on the water the exposure may be two or three hours:

I calculate the passage of the moon and its lighting, also the degrees of the moon by the season and by the time of night.... The direction of the moon is very important. It has to be south or south-east of the position of the camera.... This is something you can design before you create an image. (7)

Clearly Sugimoto had designed our portrait before we arrived. The entire business of taking the photograph took perhaps 10 or 15 minutes, not counting the time that Sugimoto and his assistant had spent in preparing the lighting before our arrival. After rejecting the suggestion that we might each hold a book, Sugimoto first asked Barnet to sit on a tall stool, and Burto to stand beside him, but as soon as he looked at this arrangement he rejected the idea and told Barrier to get up and stand next to Burto, a bit in front of him. "Bill, closer; now come up front a bit. OK." (Philippe Halsman, we should mention, said that he never told the subject how to stand.) At this point an assistant put chalk marks on the floor, and Sugimoto told us not to move. Then came the first Polaroid, which was a bit overexposed and which showed our eyeglasses as white disks. Sugimoto commented on the reflections, and we volunteered that we wouldn't mind removing our glasses, an idea that he welcomed. Two more Polaroids followed. One other detail: for the first two Polaroids, Barnet held the book more to his right, revealing an ample gut that he is a bit ashamed of, so when he saw the picture he suggested that he might move his arm slightly, thus covering his bulging stomach. Sugimoto was amenable, and he took the final picture--not a Polaroid--which you see here. And that was it. We thought of Whistler's words, when in the famous libel trial Ruskin's lawyer disparaged a painting that Whistler admitted he executed quickly. The picture, Whistler went on to explain to the court, was the result not of a few hours but of "the knowledge of a lifetime."