Japanese, b. 1948. Contemporary Japanese photographer, Hiroshi Sugimoto, craft his exquisite and mysterious black-and-white images using a large-format camera similar to 19th-century-style. Influenced by Surrealist and Dadaist theory, especially Marcel Duchamp, Sugimoto believes that a photographer never makes an actual subject, rather just steals images from the world. Sugimoto uses photography to find the permanent nature of the otherwise transient world. His works explore the history and invisibility of the elemental forces of nature. He is a recipient of fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in 1980 and the National Endowment for the Arts in 1982.