ITALY by Hiroshi Sugimoto

.

“Last year, when I traveled to Italy to photograph certain buildings and early opera houses, I brought along a book about four young Japanese Christians who made a celebrated tour of Europe in the late 16th century. At the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, I discovered by coincidence that these missionaries had heard a concert there. Looking at other sites on their route, I was amazed that I seemed to be following their trail. I just felt their spirits knocking on my spirit, so I started intentionally visiting places they went, thinking they saw the same things that I was seeing. There is a 400-year gap, but my work is rooted in visualizing the passage of time.”

VOYAGES / VISUAL JOURNEY FOR 6 PHOTOGRAPHERS /THE NEW YOURK TIMES MAGAZINE (the all project in Voyages)

Teatro Villa Aldrovandi-Mazzacorrati, Bologna (stage side). As with this “teatrino,” or “little theater,” built as part of a private villa in Bologna, Sugimoto often supplied his own screen system. Here, he projected “Le Notti Bianche” (“White Nights’'), a 1957 film by Luchino Visconti

o Scientifico del Bibiena, Mantua (stage side). For Sugimoto, photographing historic Italian stages represented a continuation of his early work shooting movie theaters, which he began in the late 1970s. “Suppose you shoot a whole movie in a single frame?” he asked himself at the time. “You get a shining screen.” When in Italy, Sugimoto projected classic Italian movies. On the screen in Mantua it was “I Vitelloni” by Frederico Fellini.

Teatro Olimpico, Vicenza. It was here that Sugimoto realized he had been retracing some of the steps of the teenage Japanese emissaries he had been reading about. A mural in the theater commemorates the night in 1585 that a musical performance was given in their honor.

Teatro Scientifico del Bibiena, Mantua (seating side). In 1770, a few weeks after this theater opened, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who was 13, performed here.

 

Teatro Villa Aldrovandi-Mazzacorati, Bologna (seating side). Although this theater was built long after the Japanese Christians traveled through Italy, Sugimoto visited many of the places they had been in Bologna.