Sugimoto lives in New York and Tokyo, and has held retrospective exhibitions at London's Hayward Art Museum, Beijing Jurens Centre for Contemporary Art, and the Australian Museum of Contemporary Art. His work is in the collections of international art institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Guggenheim Museum, the Tokyo Palace in Paris, and the Ponbido Art Center, among others. He has been awarded the Royal Photographic Society Centenary Medal, the Noguchi Award, the Japanese Government Purple Medal, the Takamatsu Palace Memorial World Culture Award, the Hasso International Photography Award and the Tokyo Daily Art Prize.