Hiroshi Sugimoto: Conceptual Forms and Mathematical Models

The meticulous practice of photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto (born 1948) is like that of a painter's. Inspired by Marcel Duchamp's obsession with the mechanics of space and the mathematical foundations of his works, such as "The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even" (or "The Large Glass"), Sugimoto photographed nineteenth-century mathematical models from the collection at the Komaba Museum at the University of Tokyo, which also features the third and last authorized replica of Duchamp's "Large Glass." Like the models that Man Ray photographed in the 1930s at the Institut Henri Poincaré in Paris, these objects also require a visual understanding of complicated trigonometry functions. This is the first publication to compare and contrast Sugimoto's photographs of mathematical models with his own mathematical models--computer-controlled precision tools made of aluminum.