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Lot Essay
La série Theaters réalisée entre 1978 et 1980, lui est inspirée par ses années de lycée, lorsque faisant partie d’un club de photographie il passait du temps dans les cinémas du quartier de Shibuya à Tokyo, cherchant à capturer l’image en mouvement – celle d’Audrey Hepburn notamment, dans le film Vacances Romaines. Des années plus tard, il se met en quête de théâtres américains des années 1920 à l’architecture pré-moderniste et reconvertis en salles de cinéma. A l’aide d’une chambre et d’une pellicule de 8 x 10 pouces, il règle le temps de pose de son appareil sur la durée complète du film. Sur les tirages, quatre fois plus grands que le négatif, apparaît un rectangle blanc évoquant la notion du temps qui passe mais aussi le trop plein d’information qui ne permettrait pas à la mémoire de tout conserver.
For his Theaters series, created between 1978 and 1980, Sugimoto drew inspiration from his high-school years, when he was a member of a photography club and spent time in the cinemas of Tokyo’s Shibuya district, trying to capture the moving image – including that of Audrey Hepburn, in the film Roman Holiday. Years later, he started searching for American theatres of the 1920s with pre-modernist architecture that had been converted into cinemas. Using a chamber and an 8 x 10 inches film, he set the exposure time of his camera to the entire duration of the film. On the prints, which are four times the size of the negative, a white rectangle appears, suggesting the idea of time passing and of the information overload that prevents the memory from preserving everything.
For his Theaters series, created between 1978 and 1980, Sugimoto drew inspiration from his high-school years, when he was a member of a photography club and spent time in the cinemas of Tokyo’s Shibuya district, trying to capture the moving image – including that of Audrey Hepburn, in the film Roman Holiday. Years later, he started searching for American theatres of the 1920s with pre-modernist architecture that had been converted into cinemas. Using a chamber and an 8 x 10 inches film, he set the exposure time of his camera to the entire duration of the film. On the prints, which are four times the size of the negative, a white rectangle appears, suggesting the idea of time passing and of the information overload that prevents the memory from preserving everything.