shashasha

The series “Geography” could be called Shintaro Sato’s starting point as a photographer. In 1992, armed with a large-format camera, Sato photographed the ground of a giant unpaved lot near Tokyo Bay, close-up, in order to shoot “flat surfaces as flat surfaces.” The series is Sato re-drawing his starting position as a cityscape photographer, beginning with the very ground that the city is built on – with photos showing “zero degrees of the landscapes.”

“The ground below the city is transformed into something resembling a satellite image of the city seen from high above, while the ground of the reclaimed land begins to look like the surface of some other planet.” (from Shintaro Sato’s afterword)