Cinema

Franck Bohbot discovered the Max Linder theatre in Paris while working on a series of photographs of Parisian stage theaters in 2011, leading to his “Cinema” series. The series features photographs of movie theaters built during the Golden Age of Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s in the US, aiming to bring to light movie theaters of the past and present that we experience mostly in the dark. Bohbot’s subject is the empty space of the theatre, shot in full color with a medium-format, high-definition digital camera and using a range of light sources. The result is an architectural typology of movie palaces, illuminating the architectural grandeur that mirrored the Hollywood-manufactured dreams devoured by millions when cinema was the undisputed king of mass entertainment. In addition to photographing theaters built in the first half of the twentieth century, Bohbot has also captured smaller contemporary movie theaters that merit attention, revealing the lingering glory of cinema in the present and perhaps something of its future.