(b. Osaka, Japan)
Shin Sugino was born in Osaka, Japan and emigrated to Canada to study photography and cinema at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute (now Toronto Metropolitan University) in 1968 at the age of nineteen. Soon after graduating in 1971, he won a Canada Council grant and began his career as a fine art photographer, while lecturing in the Department of Fine Arts at Toronto’s York University. He received assignments sending him around the world for Time, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and the National Film Board (NFB). Notable work from this time includes his 1975 exhibition, Pilgrimage, at the NFB gallery, and his exhibition sponsored by Polaroid, Moroccan Portraits, which featured a variety of subjects in Morocco holding Polaroid portraits of themselves. From 1980 to 1986, he narrowed his focus, specializing as a freelance stills photographer for feature film productions in Canada, U.S.A., Spain and Austria. In 1986 he began his extraordinarily successful advertising photography studio: Sugino Studio. There, he pioneered digital shooting and imaging in Toronto. His commercial clients include General Motors, Chrysler, Ford, Mazda, Nissan, Toyota, Lexus, Kodak, Fuji, Nikon, Nike, Levi's, Telus, IBM, Panasonic, Guinness, Carlsberg, Gilbey's, Labatt, Absolut Vodka, and VISA. Beyond fine art and commercial photography, Sugino has expanded his repertoire to include directing live action TV commercials.
Sugino has won countless awards internationally. He has claimed the Gold Lion at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival in 1998 and 2002 and the Cyber Gold Lion in 2006. He has also received acclaim from The One Show, The Advertising & Design Club of Canada, Applied Arts, Photo District News, Communication Arts and Lürzer’s Archive. In 2018 he was awarded the Les Usherwood Lifetime Achievement Award by The Advertising & Design Club of Canada and in 2020 he was inducted into Ryerson University’s Image Arts Hall of Fame. He has been a member of Royal Canadian Academy since 1998.
Despite the escalating demands on his time, Sugino has never forsaken his personal work; the last several years have been devoted to the wet collodion process, platinum print and photopolymer gravure print. His work is represented in collections of the National Film Board, National Art Gallery of Canada, Ontario Arts Council, Banff School of Fine Art and many private collections.
