佐藤真優

Mayu Sato

When advertising frames in places such as train stations are left empty, provisional photographs are sometimes inserted.
Blue skies over open fields, scenic landmarks, vividly colored flowers—these images exist solely to fill the vacant space. Devoid of the photographer’s presence or the context of a specific location, they remain there as nothing more than images.

Appearing without any clear connection, these seemingly ubiquitous landscape photographs evoke a sense of déjà vu even if one has never encountered the scenes themselves. At the same time, they carry a subtle unease reminiscent of liminal spaces. It is the moment when a landscape is severed from its place-specificity and left suspended.

My work focuses on this moment in which place-specificity is stripped away. I photograph landscapes I have actually encountered, edit the images based on the impressions received on site, and reinsert them into formats modeled after advertising frames.
This exhibition is an experimental attempt to detach photographs from both the artist’s personal perspective and a specific location, and to explore how a “vacant image” comes into being.