Tattered Palaces

posted by JoeG on May 27, 2010 at 7:49 am

The New York Times' Lens Blog of May 21, 2010, has an article on two Frenchmen, Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, who photograph 20th-century ruins. These are a lot of the same pictures from our post last month but this time, you can read about them in English. Among their favorite subjects are old American movie palaces, built from the 1910s to the 1930s. The article includes several pictures of theaters in big and small American cities, in various stages of renovation or ruin, some of them long demolished.

Among their favorite subjects are old movie palaces, built from the 1910s to the 1930s, when excitement about going to the movies was immense and theaters — like the films they showed — constructed fantasy and offered escape. Today, what remains of these spaces is poignant evidence of what going to the pictures used to mean.

“Fastuous and monumental buildings depict the way human beings projected their hopes and phantasms,” Mr. Marchand said.

You can see the article at the following link in the New York Times.