"The Japanese sign is empty: its signified flees, no god, no truth, no moral at the bottom of these signifiers which reign without counterpart. »
In the Empire of senses Rolland Barthès talks about the importance of the sign and emptiness in the Japanese culture (know as « Mu » in the zen).
The city is unclassified and organised around a place, the Imperial Palace; an unoccupied space at the opposite sense of a city center.
CENTRE VIDE is a photographical essay explores this paradox through the structure of Tokyo’s center and compose a visual language based on the void by the full, both visual and audio.
The interstices regain its full meaning. They create intimate spaces between dense and hectic cityscape.
They are similar to shojis in a traditional Japanese habitat which transforms the space and allows to modulate according to temporality and functionality.
Tokyo is constantly renewing itself, uncovering itself and subsisting itself.
Those CENTRE VIDE are intended to remain unsubstitutable while others disappear or are covered.
This essay was photographed between 2016 and 2019, becoming by the rifts and explorations of the interstice and the signifier.