Film Light

Theaters
I'm a habitual self-interlocutor. Around the time I started photographing at the Natural 

History Museum, one evening I had a near-hallucinatory vision. The question-and-

answer session that led up to this vision went something like this: Suppose you shoot a 

whole movie in a single frame? And the answer: You get a shining screen. Immediately I

sprang into action, experimenting toward realizing this vision. Dressed up as a tourist, I 

walked into a cheap cinema in the East Village with a large-format camera. As soon as

the movie started, I fixed the shutter at a wide-open aperture, and two hours later when 

the movie finished, I clicked the shutter closed. That evening, I developed the film, and 

the vision exploded behind my eyes. 




- Hiroshi Sugimoto