OF ALL OF HIROSHI SUGIMOTO’S photographs, some 120 of which were recently on view in a retrospective at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, I like best the blankest and emptiest of them, the seascapes and the movie screens. Paradoxically, these are also the least photographic of his photographs, at least as I understand the photographic: as a field of indexically registered, automatic detail, which tends toward a chaos principle of frozen momentariness and punctal oddity. There is none of that anywhere in Sugimoto’s work, but least of all in these flat seas and glowing

Frank DiPerna’s recent exhibition, “In the Studio: Frank DiPerna,” included fourteen photographs notable for their deceptively simple composition and saturated colors. The shots—mostly still lifes and tableaux—border on the surreal, a significant departure from the empiricist landscape photography for which the artist is best known. Moreover, they demonstrate in subtle ways his ability to intertwine irony and wit with an acute sense of texture and a resourceful use of found objects. DiPerna, a professor at the Corcoran College of Art & Design, created this new body of work in order to acknowledge