TITLE: The Void Shaper - Beyond the Landscape: Its End and Rebirth -「 Sculpture of the Void」

Extracting landscape as a sign, deconstructing the very concept of landscape photography, and reconstructing it anew.

Traditionally, landscape photography has sought to capture “place”—
a field where things acquire meaning, function, and interrelationships.

I deliberately strip away that “place,”
bringing the objects themselves to the forefront,
and attempt a sculptural approach that treats space itself,
as one might in sculpture or installation.

Through long exposure, sky and sea collapse into a single plane,
and rocks emerge as nothing but sheer mass.

It is through the tension of surrounding emptiness that space itself begins to rise.

This is photography as an extension of Mono-ha.

Lee Ufan (1936–) once described all things as “relational,”
claiming that nothing exists independently,
but only through its relationship to the world.
By placing stones and steel plates in space,
he sought to make those relationships visible.

This series, however, stands in opposition to that structure.

I strip meaning and relational context from the landscape,
and the rocks that remain, placed within space,
bear no narrative—
they simply exist.

It is this minimal relationship that gives rise to a new space.
Peeling away the skin of the world,
returning to the moment before meaning and story emerge,
I attempt to present that moment through the medium most capable
of transforming everything into “landscape”: photography.

In other words, this is a questioning of how the world itself is structured.

Is what we perceive truly “landscape”?

Or is it simply “existence”?

Or perhaps, nothing more than mass?

I photograph with the desire to bring the institution of landscape photography itself—
at least once—
to an end.

AUTHOR: katsuhide motoi (Japan)