Pace London is currently hosting a survey exhibition of celebrated Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugimoto’s ongoing “Diorama” series. “Hiroshi Sugimoto: Still Life” features 13 large-format photographs produced between 1976 and 2012, revealing Sugimoto as an artist who dwells in the artifice of the image. At first glance his “Diorama” works appear to be images of the natural world, but are in fact images of dioramas inside natural history museums.

Sugimoto draws inspiration from the notion of fossilization, exploring the fossil as a historical fact and photographic conceit. According to Pace, “the fossil serves as a living record and point of departure into history, crystalizing a moment in time into a singular object.”

Recalling the origins of his “Diorama series, Sugimoto said: “Upon first arriving in New York in 1974, I did the tourist thing. Eventually I visited the Natural History Museum, where I made a curious discovery: the stuffed animals positioned before painted backdrops looked utterly fake, yet by taking a quick peek with one eye closed, all perspective vanished, and suddenly they looked very real. I’d found a way to see the world as a camera does. However fake the subject, once photographed, it’s as good as real.”

“Hiroshi Sugimoto: Still Life,” November 21, 2014 to January 24, 2015, Pace London, 6 Burlington Gardens, London, W1S 3ET