Teresa Hubbard (B. 1965) and Alexander Birchler (B. 1962)

chromogenic print, oversized, framed, a gallery label signed in ink and editioned '5/6' and an exhibition label on the reverse, 2000 

Austin, Austin Museum of Art, 22 to Watch: New Art in Austin, April - May 2002

This print has not been removed from its frame, and it appears to be in generally excellent condition. The letterpress Bonakdar Jancou Gallery, New York label on the reverse of the frame includes all of the information regarding this print and has been signed by each of the photographers in ink.
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Film—its history, use, and thematic possibilities—has long been important to video, photography, and sculpture artists Teresa Hubbard and Alexander Birchler, who have worked collaboratively since 1990.  The 2000 'Filmstills' series of four Berlin movie theaters—two closed and in decay, two from a bygone era, but still operative—were the artists' first works made outside of their studio. The Odeon, shown in the present photograph, is one of the older, but still vital, theaters they photographed.

The pair photographed 12 theaters in Berlin from among 60 in consideration.  Those selected were small urban neighborhood theaters that could be photographed with clear frontal views of the façades. Once a theater was chosen, Hubbard and Birchler carefully studied the changes that occurred to each cinema during the course of a day and then photographed it over a period of three to four days. The resulting images were then combined and layered to create, in a single image, a document of the building over time.

Odeon at first appears to be a straightforward documentary photograph, with its narrow, frontal perspective and limited flat planes of surrounding architecture. During the course of digital production, the artists have not added anything beyond what has been captured.  However, they have removed and shifted individual elements (posters, graffiti, garbage cans) that might help situate the theater in a specific city for benefit of the viewer.  This manipulation heightens the image's imaginary quality.  The absence of people in the photograph is intentional, further obscuring any possible distinctions of place.  Though unpeopled, there is a suggestion of life behind this facade.

The photograph's format, the dimensions of which mimic the aspect ratio of widescreen American films, was chosen, as Hubbard says, to suggest 'the fictional nature of architecture.  By showing the façade as a filmstill, the photo could be an excerpt from a film.  This turns reality into fiction, and the façade could just as well be a film set.'  In a 2000 interview with tec21 editor Lilian Pfaff and curator Philipp Kaiser of the Museum fur Gegenwartskunst Basel, Hubbard and Birchler said, 'We want to evoke the experience of movie-theaters, rather than that of photography.  We do not want the viewers to see the photograph of a movie-theater' (The artists' web site, www.hubbardbirchler.net/texts/kaiser_pfaff_interview_e.html).

Other prints of this image from the edition of 6 are held in the UBS Art Collection, Zurich, and in the Austrian Verbund Electricity Corporation in Vienna.