Quotes from Hiroshi Sugimoto

I'm inviting the spirits into my photography. It's an act of God.

Art always helps religion; it became an inseparable phenomenon when human beings gained consciousness.

I don't know how many serious Christians exist here in America, but the Japanese, the younger generation is leaving the Buddhist religion mentality behind.

I don't love the postmodern statement: "You shouldn't be spiritual if you are the artist."

Not any particular religion or school of religion, but being an artist, you have to be spiritual, in a way.

It's pre-photography, a fossilization of time, Americans have done the Zen garden to death. I wanted to do something different.

Life is one passage and then you keep moving into another state.

All over the planet, nature is being transformed into 'un-nature' at breakneck speed...My life is part of natural history. I long to know where that history came from and where it is going.

Many people [still] believe that at the time of your death, 1,000 Buddhas show up and welcome you into the paradise state.

I don't know whether the future or 2018 exists or not, but if it exists, I'm offering a show to a museum in Australia titled "Time Reversed." Time is going backwards.

To me, as a visual artist, I don't want to get into the theory of Buddhism. There are many Buddhism theories and they fight each other, like Christians as well.

However fake the subject, once photographed, it's as good as real.

The 1,000 Buddha, to me, is almost like a contemporary art piece.

My art has gained some high value.

When people call me a photographer, I always feel like something of a charlatan—at least in Japanese. The word shashin, for photograph, combines the characters sha, meaning to reflect or copy, and shin, meaning truth, hence the photographer seems to entertain grand delusions of portraying truth.

Photography is a system of saving memories. It's a time machine, in a way, to preserve the memory, preserve time.

When I wake up I just make it happen. My dreams come true- that is the artistic practice.