This exhibition will showcase Hiroshi Sugimoto's "Opera House" series for the first time in Japan.

The "Opera House" is a series of photographs of centuries-old opera theaters in Europe taken using the same technique as Sugimoto's "Theater" series, which he has continued to produce since the 1970s.

The movie theaters photographed in "Theater", American movie theaters, built in the early 20th century in imitation of European theaters, became enormous and were decorated with exotic decorations that interweave the opulent designs of various regions and eras. They were decorated with exotic decorations that interweaved the opulent designs of various regions and eras. The production of "Opera House" began with Sugimoto's visit to the European theaters from which the decorations were taken.

The "Opera House" is filmed with a screen set up on the stage, showing classic films that are considered masterpieces. The camera's exposure time is set to the running time of each film, and the hundreds of thousands of film frames that are irradiated onto the screen are captured on a single piece of photographic film, creating a glowing white rectangle on the screen that reveals the interior decoration of the opera house. Like "Theater," "Opera House" is a series of photographs that capture the time of a single film, but while "Theatre" is a horizontal composition of a movie theater, "Opera House" is a vertical composition because of its architectural structure, and not only the stage side where the screen is located but also the seats illuminated by the light from the screen are photographed.

Sugimoto's journey through the classical opera houses of Italy continued to France, where he photographed the magnificent small theater that Marie Antoinette, who loved the theater, built for herself at the Petit Trianon of the Palace of Versailles in 2018. In 2019, Sugimoto also photographed the Opéra Garnier, where "At the Hawk's Well," a play he created for the Paris Opera was staged including a Noh stage created on the stage. In this solo exhibition at Gallery Koyanagi, these two opera houses photographed in France will also be on view.

Sugimoto personally selected the films projected on the "Opera House" to suit the theater, and summarized the stories and converted them into text after filming.

Also, from Saturday, September 17, "Hiroshi Sugimoto Honkadori: Tradition and Flight of Japanese Culture" at Himeji City Museum of Art in Hyogo Prefecture, and "Engyoji x Hiroshi Sugimoto" at Shokasan Engyoji Temple, a famous temple also located in the northwest part of Himeji City will take place.