(She / Her)

Atrium. 2025

Archival pigment print. From The Marble Court of Perpetual Spring

“For the past few years, I have been exploring leisure complexes, strip malls, indoor shopping centres, and arcades across Northern England—often finding myself walking alone.”

Scott’s project began with the rediscovery of a tween-age obsession: visiting the gleaming halls of out-of-town shopping centres, which once offered a simulacrum of metropolitan freedom. Justin Bieber echoed through the speaker system, and floral body spray lingered in the air.

By the early 2010s, the Thatcherite import of American mall culture was already in rapid decline. These air-conditioned atriums, once perfectly catered to human homeostasis, now stand as hollow, pillared ruins of late 20th-century consumer culture. A surreal environment emerges: tiled corridors echo with no footsteps; atriums remain locked in perpetual fluorescent dusk; and the sky is painted on.

Emily Jane Scott (she/her) is a British photographer working primarily with analogue processes. 

Her practice centres on documentary photography, with a focus on the gothic, the sublime, and the surreal in everyday spaces. Scott is a graduate of Falmouth University, where she completed a BA in Photography.