Tokihiro Sato
#384, Kokuritsu-Soko 2, 1999
Tokihiro Sato (Japanese, born 1957), #384, Kokuritsu-Soko 2, 1999, gelatin silver print on black-and-white transparency over light panel, 39 x 48 in. Schwartz Art Collection, Harvard Business School, 2000.15.
Sato creates long-exposure photographs, drawing with a flashlight (by night) or reflecting sunlight back at the camera with a mirror (by day). These lights are recorded as traces of the artist's presence, while he himself is rendered invisible by his motion during the course of the exposure. As described in the 1997 catalogue Tokihiro Sato: Photo Respiration, these large-scale transparencies are then installed and lit from behind, the resulting glowing images embodying presence and absence, and materiality and spirituality.