Viewing Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre: Movie Theaters

Movie Theaters is the culmination of a 15-year project between French photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, capturing the once-grand “cathedrals of cinema” of the Golden Age of the American film industry. With many of these grand buildings dating from the 1910s-1920s Hollywood boom, their interiors are palatial, with opulent domed ceilings and cavernous seating structures made to sit hundreds. As the 1929 Great Depression and consequent years of wartime threatened their livelihood, these fantastic spaces became relics of a past era. With many hastily demolished to make way for growing retail centres and residential development, only a few slipped through the cracks to lie dormant or be converted into bizarre but beautiful amalgamations of their past and present selves.

These precious few feature in Marchand and Meffre’s exhibition, and the accompanying linen-bound hardcover book. Captured on large format 4×5 film using long exposures and existing light, the images present ghostly spaces frozen in time. With flashes of wry humour from those converted into ultra-modern basketball pitches and supermarkets, seemingly unaware of their lavish ceilings, this exhibition pinpoints a seemingly lost moment in American history.