Lightning Fields by Hiroshi Sugimoto is a camera-less photographic series begun in 2006, produced in his darkroom. The project centers on capturing electrical discharges on film using high-voltage currents, situating itself at the intersection of photography and scientific experimentation.
The series emerged at a moment when digital photography had become dominant, prompting Sugimoto to revisit and reimagine the analog medium. He drew direct inspiration from William Henry Fox Talbot—an inventor of photography who also experimented with electricity in collaboration with Michael Faraday. Sugimoto viewed their unfinished scientific inquiries as a legacy to extend, and he sought to replicate and verify those early experiments in his own darkroom. This historical lineage lends Lightning Fields a dual function as both contemporary artwork and homage to the origins of photographic science.
Building on this, Lightning Fields interrogates the nature of visibility, energy, and the origins of life. Sugimoto recounts turning a photographic flaw—static discharges that scar film—into a creative tool. He further connects this phenomenon to the primordial conditions that may have sparked life on Earth, by submerging film in saltwater and applying electric charge to mimic the energy of a meteor strike into the ocean. The results, in his view, echo organic growth and microscopic movement, transforming the photographic surface into a metaphorical petri dish.
Visually, the series is rendered in black-and-white gelatin silver prints, characterized by branching, fractal-like forms and high-contrast fields of light against darkness. The unpredictable paths of electrical discharge appear as lightning bolts, roots, or vascular systems, inviting diverse readings from viewers. Sugimoto selects and enlarges portions of large-format film exposed through these experiments, offering a refined yet elemental visual vocabulary.
Technically speaking, the images are created using a 400,000-volt Van de Graaff generator, metal plates, discharge wands, and, in some cases, Himalayan salt dissolved in water. Sugimoto directs sparks across the film without a camera, embracing both chance and danger.
From early gallery presentations in San Francisco, Tokyo, and New York to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art’s pairing with Talbot’s “photogenic drawings,” the series built sustained visibility. Later surveys—Black Box and Time Machine—and the limited edition The Long Never positioned it at the intersection of art, physics, and photographic history.
