I studied Photography in college. It’s my passion. The group of friends I studied with would often go on museum outings and photowalks. On one trip, we visited the Museum Of Contemporary Art in downtown Los Angeles. They had an exhibit by a Japanese photographer that captured my attention. They were a series of large format black and white prints of views of the ocean. In all of them, the horizon went right through the middle of the frame. Some of them were easy to tell that it was the ocean, others were more difficult; misty fog filled the sky and diluted the horizon, or the photo was taken in the evening with little light and you could barely see the horizon. All of them had the perfect balance of air and water. This struck me as so simple.

I’m not sure why, but I did not take note of the artist that day. The images of the photographs have stuck in my mind ever since. I’d always wanted to find out who the photographer was… but, never really took too much time in searching for their identity.

Fast-forward to present day: U2 has a new album out this week – No Line On The Horizon. I saw the cover art for it a few weeks ago and it was a black and white image of the ocean, with the horizon going straight through the middle of the frame. It also had an “equal” symbal overlaid on the image. I did wonder a little bit about it, but was distracted by the character overlaid on it. This morning, while searching for some music information on the webs, I saw a newer version of the album, and it did not have that overlaid “equal” character on it.

Immediately I knew it was one of those photographs that I stared at 17+ years ago. I did a quick google of “U2 cover art photographer” and did not take long to discover the artist: Hiroshi Sugimoto

And I found on his website, a page on his ‘Seascape‘ series. It shows three images, but I remember there were more than that.

Serendipity, for the win!