The Frist Art Museum ‘s Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery featured Presence or Absence: The Photographs of Tokihiro Sato, an exhibition of 13 landscape photographs by one of Japan’s most acclaimed and best-known contemporary artists, June 18–September 12, 2010.
Originally trained as a sculptor, Sato first used photography when he had the idea of tracing light tracks next to one of his wire sculptures and capturing them with a camera. This experiment, in which he created light “trails” with a small pencil torch, led Sato to the discovery that he could express himself through sculpture using photography as his medium to fuse light and space.Sato uses traditional technology in untraditional ways. His photographs can take up to three hours to make as he moves across the landscape with mirrors and lights to create ultra-long exposures using a large-format, 8 x 10 camera set on a tripod.
