Hiroshi Sugimoto was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan. In 1970, Sugimoto studied politics and sociology at St. Paul’s University in Tokyo. Two years later, in 1972, he retrained as an artist and received his BFA in Fine Arts at the Art Center College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, California. Afterward, Sugimoto settled in New York City. Sugimoto has spoken of his work as an expression of ‘time exposed’, or photographs serving as a time capsule for a series of events in time. His work also focuses on transience of life, and the conflict between life and death.

Sugimoto is also deeply influenced by the writings and works of Marcel Duchamp, as well as the Dadaist and Surrealist movements as a whole. He has also expressed a great deal of interest in late 20th century modern architecture.

His use of an 8×10 large-format camera and extremely long exposures have garnered Sugimoto a reputation as a photographer of the highest technical ability. He is equally acclaimed for the conceptual and philosophical aspects of his work.

Sugimoto began his work with Dioramas in 1976, a series in which he photographed displays in natural history museums. The cultural assumption that cameras always show us reality tricks many viewers into assuming the animals in the photos are real until they examine the pictures carefully. His series Portraits, begun in 1999, is based on a similar idea. In that series, Sugimoto photographs wax figures of Henry VIII and his wives. These wax figures are based on portraits from the 16th century and when taking the picture Sugimoto attempts to recreate the lighting that would have been used by the painter.

Begun in 1978, Sugimoto's Theatres series involved photographing old American movie palaces and drive-ins, exposing the film for the duration of the entire film, the film projector providing the sole lighting. The luminescent screen in the centre of the composition, the architectural details and the seats of the theatre are the only subjects in the photographs, and the unique lighting gives the works a surreal look, as a part of Sugimoto's attempt to reveal time in photography.

For his 2009 series Lightning Fields he abandoned the use of the camera, producing photographs using a400,000 volt Van de Graaff generator to apply an electrical charge directly onto the film. The highly detailed results combine bristling textures and branching sparks into highly evocative images.

Sugimoto is also an accomplished architect. He approaches all of his work from many different perspectives, and architecture is one component that he uses to design the settings for his exhibitions. He also gets involved with the performance art occurring beside them. This allows him to frame his works precisely the way he wants to.

In 2009 U2 selected Sugimoto's "Boden Sea" as the cover for their album No Line on the Horizon to be released in March that year. This image had previously been used by sound artists Richard Chartier and Taylor Deupree for their 2006 CD inspired by Sugimoto's "seascapes" series.