Lost At Sea Of Buddha

Hiroshi Sugimoto, Sea of Buddha (008), taken in 1995, gelatin silver print, 47 x 58 3/4 in., ed 5, via Marian Goodman Gallery, which should be a sign of when it was actually produced Seeing Hiroshi Sugimoto’s show at the Met in 1995 was a life-changer, and then seeing his Time Exposed (Buddha Series) photos and Accelerated Buddha, his 5-minute video, at Sonnabend in 1997 blew my mind. Sugimoto spent ten days in 1995 photographing the 1,000 12th century kannon Buddha sculptures in the Sanjusangendō in Kyoto, in 48 images. Each identically composed photo shows 33 kannon in eight rows, for 1,584 Buddhas. There are eleven rows of statues, so there’s plenty of room for overlap while still photographing them all. Hiroshi Sugimoto, Sea of Buddha, 1997, quarto, ed. 1000, this example via Shapero Rare Books Like the video, which packs all 48 images in 1,000 times to get to a million Buddhas, Sugimoto published a book, Sea of Buddha, a little leporello that reproduced all 48 images, in an…