John Fallon

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Picture Houses

2008-2013

Odeon. O*de"on (?), n. [NL., fr. Gr., fr.: cf.F. odeon. See Ode.) A kind of theater in ancient Greece, smaller than the dramatic theater and roofed over, in which poets and musicians submitted their works to the approval of the public, and contended for prizes; -- hence, in modern usage, the name of a hall for musical or dramatic performances.
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913 + 1828).

The following series of photographs are a document of the facades, behinds and interior spaces of former picture houses in and around Birmingham and the Black Country. These old cinemas now sit abandoned in varying states of disrepair, or else repurposed for today's consumer as lecture theatres, banqueting suites, bingo halls and a whole host of leisure pursuits.

Despite the apparent detachment from their original function as a cinema, each of the venues represented here reveals a trace of its own history. These notable, unique and often protected examples of British architecture nod to a previous life where patrons would come to escape and absorb themselves in the magic of cinema. Picture Houses is a roll call of cinematic relics haunted by film-going ghosts, and the images are an honest record of where they now stand.

Will these monolithic structures of cinema be under a different state of metamorphosis every 10-20 years? And can we apply a notion that a building has 'sold its soul' simply to survive?