The more Hiroshi Sugimoto expands his repertoire and experiments with new ideas and forms, the more he progresses toward becoming a quintessentially Japanese artist. His most recent show "Nature of Light" opened this week as the inaugural exhibition of the new Izu Photo Museum located on the green hills of the Izu peninsula, about an hour-and-a-half's drive south of Tokyo.

This exhibition features just one new photographic work by Sugimoto, Lightning Fields Composed 011, a mural-sized set of two photographs mounted across six panels each. The image looks like an open field at night being repeatedly assailed by tree-like lightening bolts. The individual elements of this large composition are taken from a series of images "Lightning Fields" (currently on exhibit in San Francisco's Fraenkel Gallery), which Sugimoto produced using 40,000 volts of electricity.

Throughout his career, Sugimoto's prints have been known for their exquisite craftsmanship. In order to produce his flawless horizon lines of his "Seascapes" or the buttery tones of his "Diorama" series, all traces of any electrostatic interference in the printing process have to be eliminated. In the "Lightning Fields" series, he's gone in the opposite direction and literally exposed the photographic film to high-charges of electricity to produce what looks like the fractals of lightning bolts or fur-like dimensional magnetic fields.

Stepping back from the crystalline details of the print, the larger composition of the massive print becomes apparent; Sugimoto has arranged the individual instances of the "lightning" from various exposures into a composition that is typical of 15th and 16th century Japanese screens - wherein the individual elements (usually a tree, river, or mountain) are arranged in a manner that makes the use of empty spaces (the space between the trees, for instance) as a central compositional theme.

His choice of form as well - two, six-paneled screens - makes the reference unmistakable. To seal the matter, he has placed a Kamakura period (13th century) wooden sculpture of a "Thunder God" - who strikes a dramatic pose - in the gallery to serve as a companion to the large screens. During the reception of the exhibition opening, Sugimoto explained that this was meant to express how Japanese have traditionally understood the elements of nature as imbued with life. But his impulse to include the sculpture signaled something else beyond the contents of the images on display.

In this moment, Sugimoto reminded me of the Japanese tea master Sen no Rikyu, who established the tradition of wabi-cha (Japanese tea ceremony). In this rtual, a tea master is not only responsible for serving a bowl of flavorful tea but also takes care to make sure all aspects of the tea experience are in harmony and counter-balance. This includes not only the tea bowls and the room's furnishings but also the room itself, its architecture, the steps leading to the room, the garden outside the tea house, and how these are set in accordance with the guest who is about to arrive, the time of day, the seasons, and even the state of life at the time. The tea master is responsible for the totality of the guest's experience. Here too, Sugimoto is our modern-day Sen no Rikyu for he has also designed the museum's architecture and its adjoining gardens, and its stone walls. The entirety of the setting is the composition that Sugimoto is presenting in this exhibition, of which the photographs are but one element. Our experience is entirely modulated by Sugimoto.

Left to right: Lightening Fields 144 ,2009; gelatin silver print; copyright Hiroshi Sugimoto, courtesy of Gallery Koyanagi. Leaves of Asparagus, 4 October 1840, 2008; toned gelatin-silver print; copyright Hiroshi Sugimoto, courtesy of Gallery Koyanagi. Lightening Fields Illuminated 003, 2008; mixed medium-film, acryl and light box; copyright Hiroshi Sugimoto, courtesy of Gallery Koyanagi. Photogenic Drawing believed to be Mlle. Amélina Petit, Talbot Family Governess, circa 1840-1841, 2006; gelatin-silver print, copyright Hiroshi Sugimoto, courtesy of Gallery Koyanagi.

The long, rectangular exhibition space is partitioned into two galleries, one much larger than the other. In the smaller gallery, Sugimoto presents fourteen photogenic drawings that he printed from original negatives made by William Henry Fox Talbot over 170 years ago. The fragile negatives have deteriorated over time and they did not have such considerable detail to begin with. In one room, Sugimoto shows us the robust and detailed forms of white light in his "Lightning Fields," and in another he shows us the subdued and foggy images of what Talbot photographed: family members, a piece of lace, a Chinese vase, a small flower, or a statuette of Laocoon and his sons. This is also a comment on photography in general. At time when, as Sugimoto explains, the digital age is putting an end to the era of the gelatin-silver print, this is his "requiem" for the medium. The anterior garden has a stone wall and a curious tomblike structure that he described as an "ancient Kofun tumulus." In a way, a museum is in itself like a tomb, a storehouse of treasures past. The laying of a permanent stone wall (which Sugimoto designed and oversaw personally) seems wholly suitable for something as temporary as his requiem.

In returning to the first days of photography, I feel as though Sugimoto has also returned to what influenced him in his early days, when he was first started dealing Japanese antiques alongside his work as a photographer. Where Sugimoto shows us a glimpse of what a pioneer of photography first created, he also shows us the direction of this work to come, which is a return to origins too.

Ivan Vartanian is an author and editor based in Tokyo, Japan. He has written several books on photography, art, and design, included Setting Sun: Writings by Japanese Photographers (Aperture 2005). His most recent publication, Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s & ‘70s (Aperture 2009), is now in stores.

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