Most movie theaters lack the character of those from earlier times. Boxy mall movie houses, chain cinemaplexes, and other monstrosities dominate our current filmic climate. But photographer Ave Pildas won’t let us forget the unique movie theaters of yesteryear thanks to a photo series featuring theater boxes offices captured during the 1970s. Most of the theaters were photographed in Los Angeles — and many of them no longer stand.
Vintage theater designers created the box office as the crowning jewel on the facade of the structure. “Pildas’ frontal camera position and distance to his subject remain the same in each image. This methodology forms a visual inventory of varied theater box offices; a typology that surveys the remaining traces of a vanishing architectural and cinematic culture,” writes the gallery.
Bijou: Photographs of Theater Box Offices will open at Joseph Bellows Gallery on September 5 (closing October 24). See a preview of Pildas’ theatrical photos in our gallery.
Ave Pildas, Courtesy of Joseph Bellows Gallery
Ave Pildas, Courtesy of Joseph Bellows Gallery
Ave Pildas, Courtesy of Joseph Bellows Gallery
Ave Pildas, Courtesy of Joseph Bellows Gallery
Ave Pildas, Courtesy of Joseph Bellows Gallery
Ave Pildas, Courtesy of Joseph Bellows Gallery
Ave Pildas, Courtesy of Joseph Bellows Gallery
Ave Pildas, Courtesy of Joseph Bellows Gallery
Ave Pildas, Courtesy of Joseph Bellows Gallery
Ave Pildas, Courtesy of Joseph Bellows Gallery
Ave Pildas, Courtesy of Joseph Bellows Gallery
Ave Pildas, Courtesy of Joseph Bellows Gallery
Ave Pildas, Courtesy of Joseph Bellows Gallery