Seeing the Cinema at Astoria's Museum of the Moving Image, NYC: Sugimoto and Three Others Photograph the Movie Theater

Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, opened a new photography exhibition on October 10: Seeing the Cinema: Photographic Visions of Movie Theaters. It fills the Amphitheater Gallery and runs through March 21, 2027. The museum describes it as a meditation on what it has meant, and still means, to gather in the dark and watch stories unfold on a screen, and it approaches the movie theater as both an architectural icon and a cultural form.

Four photographers provide the material. Thomas R. Schiff contributes panoramic views of neighborhood theater exteriors. Hiroshi Sugimoto is represented by his renowned long-exposure images of auditoriums. John Margolies documented drive-ins, and Joseph Holmes made portraits of projectionists. The museum groups these as architectural, atmospheric, environmental and occupational perspectives, which together ask visitors to think of the theater as a physical site and as a cultural idea.

For Japanese-speaking visitors, Sugimoto is the obvious draw. The image the museum uses to represent the show, however, is a detail of Schiff's photograph of the Devon Theatre in Attica, Indiana, a reminder that small-town main-street cinemas are part of the story too.

The exhibition has a screening companion: a monthly series called Seeing the Cinema: Theaters on Screen, which presents films that use cinemas as key locations. It begins October 30 with Tsai Ming-liang's Goodbye, Dragon Inn. Separately, Tsai's 2007 short film It's a Dream is playing in the Jane Henson Amphitheater from October 22 through November 29.

The museum is at 36-01 35 Ave, Astoria, NY 11106. Hours are Thursday 2:00–6:00 p.m., Friday 2:00–8:00 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday 11:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m. The phone number is 718-777-6800, and tickets are handled through the museum's website.