With an oeuvre more than a quarter-century in the making, Mamoru Sugiyama is due for a retrospective exhibition. So that is exactly what Tokyo's respected Photo Gallery International has given the 49-year-old photographer, in a show featuring some 30 of Sugiyama's representative black-and-white still-life studies. The thing is, if you didn't know that this was a retrospective, you'd never guess by looking at the pictures. So true has Sugiyama remained to his original vision that the pictures taken 25 years ago have exactly the same atmosphere as those done no more than a few months ago.
Which is not to knock the artist or "Still Life 25 Years," as the show is called. There is something special in Sugiyama's prints, a presence diametrically opposed to self-documentation photography or the sexy "in the moment" style that flourished over the last decade.
Like the pause button on a video player, the camera shutter can capture a moment that would otherwise be inscrutable. Our eyes love the look of a sparkling wall of droplets exploding in the wake of a water-skier, or the crispness of a 300-kph race car panned against the stretching colors of a blurred background.