Sugimoto portraits

the long version

"Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugimoto is renowned for his elegant photographic series of seascapes, theaters, museum dioramas, and Buddhist statuary. His new series presents life-size, black-and-white portraits of historical figures - Henry VIII and each of his wives, Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, Oscar Wilde, and Emperor Hirohito, among others - photographed in wax museums, isolated against black backgrounds, and dramatically lit so as to create haunting Rembrandtesque images. The series, which also includes a 25-foot, five-panel photograph of a wax effigy of Leonardo's Last Supper, emulates the grand tradition of portraiture and recalls the wax figures' sources in famous paintings by Holbein, David, Van Dyck, and Vermeer."--BOOK JACKET.