The Cinemas Project
Photographs and text by Zubin Pastakia
The Cinemas Project visually traces the lives of Bombay’s disappearing single-screen cinema halls.
Once symbols of modernity, the relationship that many of these halls share with the city has changed significantly as colonial Bombay metamorphoses into an increasingly post-industrial Mumbai.
On the one hand, this collection of images is a repository of the architectural form and interior detail of these buildings that range from the classic to the idiosyncratic. These buildings seem to exist today in defiance of the generic aesthetic and cultural experience of the city’s new multiplexes.
However, to view these halls merely nostalgically — and to cast them off to history — would be to deny them a place in the present; our lived present that is in constant play with time past and pending.
As I explored these cinemas, which are simultaneously spaces of dwelling, labour and spectatorship, they revealed themselves to be sites of deep affective investment, traces of which are evident in every nook and corner.
Writing Prompt: Based on the information provided in the imagery itself and the accompanying article, what is the purpose of this photographic series? If you were to create a similar series based on a different, yet also fading architectural form, what would you shoot?
1 comment:
The purpose of this photographic series is to express how old architecture is still used today despite its age. The artist is trying to show how people still use ancient buildings without changing their appearance. The artist sounds like they believe that if something has a past, it should stay preserved the way it was since it was created. I believe that change is an unimportant concept to the artist.
I would definitely consider shooting abandoned buildings that have been inhabited by gangs and the homeless. I have always wanted to photograph the graffiti and all the different messages on the interior of the old buildings. I once entered an abandoned toy factory that was covered with graffiti, rubble, trash, and miscellaneous objects. I did not have a camera with me so I could not capture it on film.
Stephanie Latendresse
Five-six
Period five
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