In cities we have made it normal for there to be practically no empty spaces. Everywhere we look, our field of vision is filled with stimuli that demand our attention, most of it occupied by advertising. Advertisements are an element of the urban landscape that work as a subtle but persistent occupation of our mental space. However, in the 2013 series Empty Promises, the German photographer Matthias Ley shows a reverse process; as a consequence of the recession and the rise of digital media, the streets of Tokyo have begun to fill with blank hoardings.
For Ley, this work is a critique of the false promises of advertising, but also a comment on the void in Oriental culture, an idea present in its architecture and in fundamental Buddhist texts such as the Sutra of the Essence. From this perspective, the vision of a blank billboard can be interpreted not as a synonym of crisis but of leisure; a gesture of resistance that frees our mind and makes it sensitive to other types of stimuli.