Drive-by Theaters (Palimpsest II)

The title 'Drive-By Theaters' refers to Hiroshi Sugimoto and his 'Drive-In Theaters' series, initiated in 1978. This series is part of a larger collection of works that focuses on movie theaters, captured through long-exposure photography, where the exposure time precisely matches the duration of the film projected on the screen. Here, the same technique has been reused to capture - this time not American drive-ins, but video advertising billboards located on the outskirts of commercial areas. Much like Sugimoto’s 'Theaters' before them, these images question the passage of time, but also illustrate its acceleration in today’s society. The blank screen, a witness to the overflow of information turning into nothingness, serves here as a metaphor for the continuous flow of images in the digital age. This series is part of a larger body of work initiated in 2019, titled 'Palimpsests'. This term refers to a parchment where the original writing has been erased to make way for a new text, with the initial text remaining however partly visible by transparency. Indeed, these projects take the form of contemporary rewritings of iconic works from the history of photography, translated into the new context of digital society. Initiating a dialogue with techniques and theories of the past, they offer a reflection about the concept of post-photography and question the evolution of the medium in the era of its alleged disappearance.