About this artwork
Hiroshi Sugimoto recalled that when he first visited a movie theater as a child he became so immersed in the film that he felt shocked by the abrupt return to reality afterward. “There is something in common between watching a film and having a dream,” he said. “We lose ourselves in either case.” In a 1976–94 series, Sugimoto took long exposures in classical movie houses for the duration of a film. The resulting photographs show empty theater spaces lit by an accumulation of projected light; paradoxically, the blankness of the screen represents the presence of the transient images that comprised the film. Built in 1926 in a style reminiscent of a 17th-century European opera house, the Palace Theater is a fictional, nostalgic Hollywood space. The lit screen is richly metaphoric, suggesting either our own minds conjuring ephemeral images from memories and imagination or a blank slate onto which we project our desires.
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Status
- Currently Off View
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Department
- Photography and Media
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Artist
- Hiroshi Sugimoto
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Title
- Metropolitan Palace, Los Angeles
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Place
- Japan (Artist's nationality:)
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Date
- Made 1993
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Medium
- Gelatin silver print
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Edition
- 10 of 25
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Dimensions
- Image: 42.6 × 54.5 cm (16 13/16 × 21 1/2 in.); Paper: 48 × 57.8 cm (18 15/16 × 22 13/16 in.); Mount: 50.7 × 61 cm (20 × 24 1/16 in.)
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Credit Line
- Gift of the artist in memory of Jim Wood
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Reference Number
- 2011.367
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Copyright
- © 1993 Hiroshi Sugimoto.
Extended information about this artwork
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