![]() Did the first humans see this very same horizon, and will the Earth once again be emptied of human life? A view of the ocean on one side of the Light-Worship Tunnel at the Enoura Observatory, Odawara, Japan. What's striking about this series is how uncannily similar these seascapes look.īy photographing the meeting point between water and air - two elements essential for life - Sugimoto contemplates the beginning and end of time. He began this series in 1980 and has been photographing ocean horizons in diverse locations such as Switzerland, Ireland, New Zealand, and Japan (to name a few). His most famous works include the Seascapes series, a range of photographs taken at different locations around the world at different times of the day. Hiroshi SugimotoĪ prolific photographer and architectural designer since the 1970s, Hiroshi Sugimoto explores the themes of temporality, nature, place, creation, and sustainability. But with the opening of its borders, these coasts also allowed the influx of imported goods, people, and ideas, as well as the outflow of Japan's natural, human, and other resources.Ī post shared by Dragon76 an ARTivist for Sea Walls: Artists for Oceans, a PangeaSeed Foundation program for ocean conservation, Dragon76 paints murals around the world to help educate and inspire people to change how we steward our relationship with the ocean. It brought about Western industrialization and an infrastructure boom in Japan, including more ports and harbors for increased foreign trade.Ĭoastal areas have always been important hubs of local industry in Japan. ![]() The Meiji period (or Meiji Restoration) followed under a new constitutionalized government. Allegory of the New fighting the Old, early Japan Meiji, circa 1870, by an unknown Japanese artist. But more significantly, this ink and the foreign trade it represents signaled the changing of the tides for Japan as a country, which finally reopened its borders to foreigners in 1867 after about 250 years of closure. Image Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Artįoreign trade was, by law, extremely limited during this time, so the presence of Prussian blue in Hokusai's prints meant that he was dealing with art supplies smugglers. Whereas Indigo is the traditional Japanese blue ink extracted from the Persicaria Tintoria plant since the 10th century, Hokusai created rich new colors by mixing it with Prussian Blue - a European synthetic pigment that was gaining wild popularity in Japan at the end of the Edo period. Master printmaker Katsushika Hokusai (1760 - 1849) created the famous image of "The Great Wave" using a mixture of Indigo and Prussian Blue inks. What makes this famous print so striking is the delicate curvatures of the white water shapes contrasted with dark blue hues. Under The Wave Off Kanagawa and the Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji series are considered masterpieces of Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints, not only for their material qualities but for the everyday scenes they depict that tell us more about daily life in Japan during the Edo period (1603 - 1867). One of the most iconic Japanese images is a woodblock print of a scene at sea: a great wave about to engulf fishing boats with Mount Fuji overlooking the scenario in the distance.
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