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Imperial Montreal

1995
Not on view
Returned to lender
This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.
A self-taught expert on the history of photography and Zen Buddhism, Hiroshi Sugimoto posed a question to himself in 1976: what would be the effect on a single sheet of film if it was exposed to all 172,800 photographic frames in a feature-length movie? To visualize the answer, he hid a large-format camera in the last row of seats at St.　Marks　Cinema in Manhattan’s East Village and opened the shutter when the film started; an hour and a half later, when the movie ended, he closed it. The series (now forty years in the making) of ethereal photographs of darkened rooms filled with gleaming white screens presents a perfect example of yin and yang, the classic concept of opposites in ancient Chinese philosophy.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Imperial Montreal
  • Artist: Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, born Tokyo, 1948)
  • Date: 1995
  • Medium: Gelatin silver print
  • Dimensions: Image: 20 × 24 in. (50.8 × 61 cm)
    Framed: 26 × 33 in. (66 × 83.8 cm)
  • Classification: Photographs
  • Credit Line: Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee Collection
  • Curatorial Department: Photographs