Hiroshi Sugimoto at Sonnabend - New York

For this recent series, Hiroshi Sugimoto traveled Europe, North America and Asia to capture architectural landmarks of the 20th century. Unlike the sharply delineated black-and-white images of empty movie theaters and seascapes for which he is best known, these photographs are intentionally fuzzy. Titled "Architecture," the series appeared in its entirety at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, in the spring of 2003; a selection of 20 of the large, gelatin silver prints (all 71 3/4 by 60 inches) were recently on view at Sonnabend.

By shooting these famous structures out of focus and often from unfamiliar vantage points, Sugimoto arrived at an almost dreamlike imagery, and one that often leaves the viewer guessing. Despite the clean lines and whiteness of the Rietveld-Schroder House--Gerrit Rietveld (2000-01), the identity of the well-known structure is all but indistinguishable. Two white rectangles of the facade pop forward, while the remainder of the domicile fades to gray. In Brooklyn Bridge--John & Washington Roebling (2000-01), the elegant, hypnotic spiderweb of cables races toward the viewer while the familiar, though now murky, pointed arches of the towering piers lurk in the background. Sugimoto reinvents and recasts the iconic. He shot the Eiffel Tower head-on (1998); the structure is centrally located, yet the softening of its silhouette lends an impressionistic air. In Empire State Building--Shreve Lamb & Harmon (1997), he captures the skyscraper's spire and uppermost floors with the light from the offices at night seemingly ajitter. (Sugimoto also photographed the World Trade Center in 1997, though the shot was unfortunately absent from the Sonnabend show.) Guggenheim Bilbao--Frank Gehry (2000-01) isolates just a couple of the titanium giant's sweeping, shimmering curves, displaying a palette of cloudy grays. In fact, all these dramatic images were made using extended time exposures.

Sugimoto's buildings are shown contextless, with no signs of life. These beautiful pictures generate a mood of loneliness, yet they are far from mournful. Printed in such a large format, the atmospheric, evocatively unsure images still convey the monumental scale of their architectural icons.

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