CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 9/29/2014

Hiroshi Sugimoto: Dioramas

"When I first arrived in New York in 1974, I visited many of the city’s tourist sites, one of which was the American Museum of Natural History. I made a curious discovery while looking at the exhibition of animal dioramas: the stuffed animals positioned before painted backdrops looked utterly fake, yet by taking a quick peek with one eye closed, all perspective vanished, and suddenly they looked very real. I had found a way to see the world as a camera does. However fake the subject, once photographed, it’s as good as real." Featured excerpt and image, "Nyala" (1980) are reproduced from Hiroshi Sugimoto: Dioramas, featured this week in The New York Review of Books.