Behind the Shot
Los Angeles is an amusement hotbed. For more than a century, the entertainment industry has thrived in this city—known as the domain of the motion picture.
Digital media is now surpassing some traditional entertainment venues, like the cinema. This print preserves what may become a bygone slice of life: the neighborhood movie theatre. Watching movies collectively in public has always been a transformative communal experience.
The pastels of Claudio Santini’s digital collage evoke the romance and nostalgia of a ’50s-era Saturday movie matinee. Taken near Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, this work disrupts the boundaries between photography and digital media and offers a cultural iconic look typical of this area. It’s entertainment at the street level.
“Through photography, I represent the urban and architectural diversity of the streets, buildings, houses, interiors and people with continuity of vision,” Claudio says. “I am interested in the suspension and anticipation that I find in the most common and ordinary landscapes of this city.”
While his homeland of Rome is heavy with the weight of history and ancient architecture, Claudio finds Los Angeles to be much lighter—a mosaic of different styles, a locale not affected by such antiquity. In L.A. he feels freedom to express himself as an artist. “That’s why I found Los Angeles a stimulating place to live,” he says. “Moving here was a turning point in my life.”