Hiroshi Sugimoto - Theaters (1978-93)

Artist’s statement: 

“I’m a habitual self-interlocutor. Around the time I started photographing at the Natural History Museum, one evening I had a near-hallucinatory vision. The question-and-answer session that led to this vision went something like this: 

Suppose you shoot a whole movie in a single frame? 

And the answer:

You get a shining screen. 

Immediately I sprang to action, experimenting toward realizing this vision. Dressed up as a tourist, I walked into a cheap cinema in the East Village with a large-format camera. As soon as the movie started, I fixed the shutter at a wide-open aperture, and two hours later when the movie finished, I clicked the shutter closed. 

That evening, I developed the film, and the vision exploded behind my eyes.”