Known for his sets of photographs that masterfully balance the aesthetic seduction of the Orient with western creativeness, Hiroshi Sugimoto is a Japanese artist and photographer who uses black and white and an old-fashioned accordion-type.

His works are composed of silences and light – images that capture the passage of time in a flash to showcase mathematical concepts such as zero and the infinite and pinpoint the essential structures of objects while pushing out the boundaries of human imagination. On display at the 17th version of the Sydney Biennial, his latest work is another balancing act of light, energy and power in a kind of parabola of human life – trees of life, rivers of a thousand tributaries, arterial ramifications.

Lightning Fields is pure energy impressed on photographic plates. To create these graphic and highly sophisticated photographs, Sugimoto uses electricity produced by a 400,000 volt Van de Graaff generator then directed onto photo-sensitive surfaces. Lightning flashes moulded into pure form.