THE SHOW STARTS AT THE CURB
By MICHAEL PERKINS
URBAN ARCHITECTURE IN THE EARLY 20th CENTURY convulsed our sense of what a “proper” building should be, with a seismic shift in aesthetics from the staid and respectable design of the Victorian age. It’s no coincidence that this revolution occurred at the very same time that the age of mass media washed over the world, as the dictates of print advertising were supplemented with the promotional energies of movies, radio, and, eventually, television. Cities whose businesses were born in this loud, aggressive crucible of modern advertising would drastically change the way those businesses competed for our attention. Structures from the 19th century sometimes bore advertisements on their exteriors, from signs to posters. Structures in the emerging 20th century were advertisements….their design screaming out their intentions with neon, explosions of color and extremes of design. In a real way, whatever show was inside the stores truly began at the sidewalk.
It’s show time. Again.
Photographers are still scrambling to chronicle the vanishing echoes of this design surge, which was most vividly expressed in the streamline, moderne, and Art Deco movements. Function dictated form: a boutique selling hats might actually look like a hat: a photo shop might design its storefront to resemble an enormous camera. Even banks went from the quietly dignified Doric columns and Romanesque scrolls of the Gilded Age to the bizarre Aztec-meets-Moorish-meets-Hollywood mishmashes of the the Jazz Age, with every place of business screaming for your eye. All of this proves catnip to photographers, who now experience pangs of nostalgia for the bold and brassy looks that predate their own lifetimes. Give me a blinking, blaring mass of zigzags and chevrons and I am in some kind of Busby Berkeley fever dream. Especially with theatres.
Many of the world’s old neighborhood bijous have gone down to dust, others converted to street corner churches, antique shops or themed cafes. And of those that do survive, some still actively celebrate their original functions, and thus are among my favorite things to shoot. The image seen here is of downtown Ventura, California’s Century theatre. The structure is particularly delightful, its soft pastels dreamily gleaming in the warm light of this charming seaside town. California as a whole, perhaps because of its direct connection to the film industry, has seemed to have salvaged a greater number of these little jewel boxes than is typical for other parts of the USA, although they, too, have seen many such houses crushed under the heel of what passes for progress. In any event, I can be counted upon to stop, stare, drool and shoot when encountering one of these picture palaces. Because the old theatre program billings, in which features were preceded by cartoons, newsreels, shorts or travelogues, left out an important first step….that “show” that starts at the curb.
PORTRAIT OF A PAINTED LADY
By MICHAEL PERKINS
THE BEST THEATRES ARE LIKE THE GREATEST PHOTOGRAPHIC STUDIOS, in that they are, occasionally, both the physical place where great things are staged and great things in and of themselves. They are distinctive in that, years after they house miracles, some of the magic seems to linger in the air, as if it’s imbedded in the very bricks. To see the room where Richard Avedon created key touchstones of twentieth-century culture is, for some, to see more than the room itself. And to see a grand painted lady of the theatrical world is, likewise, to breathe in a rich perfume of opening nights and ovations. And to be allowed to use one medium’s eye to capture another medium’s mystery is a gift, a privilege.
The Schubert Theatre, its arches and catwalks peopled by the ghosts of glories past.
New York’s Schubert Theatre qualifies, to my eye, as sacred space, the imperial nexus between ambition and triumph that has witnessed plenty of both since opening its doors with a production of Hamlet on October 2, 1913. The Schubert, like many of the theatre district’s most venerable venues, is rich in architectural grandeur but modest of scale, seating only 1,460. However, within that compact space, a century’s worth of peerless talent has rolled up the grandest roster of winners in all of Broadway history, still boasting the all-time record run with 6,137 performances of A Chorus Line, which graced the Schubert’s stage for an astonishing fifteen years. Hits not only come first to the Schubert: they come to stay, with multiple-year champs like Crazy For You, Chicago, and Spamalot carrying on the tradition of The Philadelphia Story, Pal Joey, Kiss Me, Kate, Bye–Bye, Birdie, Oliver!, and the 2017 revival of Hello, Dolly!, which set the all-time box office record for the place.
So, how to photograph the theatre of theatres? For my first attempt, a dark exposure to deepen the classic red of the main curtain, paired with a soft-focus foray into the molded plaster figures and light fixtures flanking the side boxes….a dreamy look designed to summon forth blythe spirits. Because, while you can put up four pieces of sheet rock and call the results a theatre, some studios, some stages ring with their own life, long after the last hurrah has faded, and trying to capture that echo in a box can be the greatest show in town.
THE LAST OF MANY GOODBYES
Scottsdale, Arizona’s gorgeous little art-house complex, the Camelview Theatre, on the afternoon of its final day, December 10, 2015.
By MICHAEL PERKINS
ON THE SPOCK SIDE OF OUR BRAINS, OF COURSE WE KNOW that there is nothing particularly magical about buildings per se. Stone and steel cannot, after all, generate memory or experience; they merely house the people who do. Still and all, the loss of certain edifices engenders a purely emotional response in us, perhaps because special things can no longer happen there, and the physical proof that any of it happened at all is being rendered, at least physically, into dust. That puts us in the realm of dreams, and that’s where great photographs are born.
When a place that is special to us is about to wink out of existence, everyone who used that place stamps it with their own stories. We went to school here. This is where I proposed to your mother. The bandstand was here, along this wall. So personal a process is this that our farewell photographs of these places can take on as many different flavors as the number of people who walked their halls. And, as a result, it’s often interesting to compare the final snaps of important places as filtered through the disparate experiences of all who come to reflect, and click, in the shadow of the wrecking ball.
I have attended many an opening at theatres, but I always make a point to attend their closings. Not the end of a certain film or engagement, but the final curtain on the theatres themselves. How best to see their final acts? As a quiet, gentle sunsetting, as with the above image of Scottsdale, Arizona’s Camelview theatre, shuttering in deference to a bigger, newer version of itself at the end of 2015? Or, in the colorful confusion of the venue’s final night, with crowds of well-wishers, local dignitaries and well-wishers crowding into the final screening?
Later that same day: the Camelview’s last neon-lit night of glamour.
Each view projects my own feelings onto the resulting images, whether it be a golden dusk or a frenetic, neon-drenched, tomorrow-we-die send-off, complete with champagne and cheers. The introspective daytime shot has no teeming crowds or fanfare. The night, with its ghostly guest blurs (a result of the longer exposure) features people who are as fleeting as the theatre’s own finite run. Both are real, and neither is real. But they are both mine.
Buildings vanish. Styles change. Neighborhoods evolve. And photographic goodbyes to all these processes are never as simple as a one-size-fits-all souvenir snap. People, and memories, are too customized for that. As with movies themselves, there is always more than one way to get to the final fadeout.
THE TORQUOISE TIME TRAVELER
The wondrous Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles. A three-exposure HDR to amplify time’s toll on the building’s exterior.
by MICHAEL PERKINS
SHE HAS WITHSTOOD THE GREAT DEPRESSION, A WORLD WAR, DECADES OF ECONOMIC UPS & DOWNS, and half a dozen owners (some visionaries and some bums), and still, the sleek green/blue terra-cotta wedge that is the Wiltern Theatre is one of the most arresting sights in midtown Los Angeles. From her 83-year old perch at the intersection of Western Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard, the jewel in the lower half of the old Pelissier building still commands attention, and, for lovers of live music, a kind of creaky respect. The old girl isn’t what she used to be, but she is still standing, as the same house that once hosted film premieres in the days of Cagney and Bogart now hosts alternative and edge, with pride.
And she still makes a pretty picture, lined face and all.
Opened in 1931 as a combination vaudeville house and flagship for Warner Brothers’ national chain of film theatres, The Warner Western, as it was originally named, folded up within a few years, re-opening in mid-Depression L.A. as the Wiltern (for Wilshire and Western) operating virtually non-stop until about 1956. As a vintage movie house, it had been equipped with one of the most elegant pipe organs in town, and enthusiasts of the instrument built a small following for the place for a while with recitals featuring the instrument. By the 1970’s, however, economies for larger-than-life flicker palaces were at an all-time low, and the Wiltern’s owners tried twice themselves to apply for permission to blow her down. Preservationists got mad, then got busy.
The Wiltern’s ticket kiosk sits under a plaster canopy of Deco sunrays. 1/40 sec., f/3.5, ISO 100, 18mm.
Restoration began in the 1980’s on the Pelissier building in general, but the Wiltern, with its ornate plaster reliefs and murals, had been so neglected over the years that its turnaround was slower. It was finally reborn in 1985 as a live performance theatre, losing some seat room but newly able to stage everything from brain-blaster garage rock to Broadway road productions and ballet.
I shot the Wiltern with three HDR frame, all f/5.6, with exposure times of 1/60, 1/100. and 1/160, and blended the final image in Photomatix to really show the wear and tear on the exterior. HDR is great for amplifying every flaw in building materials, as well as highlighting the uneven color that is an artifact of time and weather. I wanted to show the theatre as a stubborn survivor rather than a flawless fantasy, and the process also helped call attention to the building’s French Deco zigzags and chevrons. For an extra angle, I also made some studies of the glorious sunburst plaster ceiling over the outside ticket kiosk. It was great to meet the old girl at last, and on her own terms.
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