Ghost Light Theaters Trio
Ghost Light Theaters Trio
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Each booklet in this three-part set riffs on silent films, creating a montage of fantasy Art Deco architecture, silhouettes, vernacular snapshots and a snippet of writing hinting at plot. The books triangulate between photography, film and theater—mysterious and evocative spaces where stories are told through words and pictures cast in the dark.
Booklet Set Details:
• Three 5x8 inch booklets with 12 pages in each. Risograph printed and saddle stitch bound by Risolve Studio in Pennsylvania
• Cover is ColorPlan Sapphire Blue and pages are Domtar Cougar
• Housed in a custom stamped thread and button envelope
• Signed and numbered limited edition of 100 sets (the last ten sets, numbered 90-100, are reserved for the Theater Maquette Edition)
• Photographed, designed and written by Rachel Phillips
• Published in November of 2020 in Pacifica, California
Permanent Holdings: Mills College, CA; Skidmore College, NY (circulating collection); Texas Women’s University, TX
The regular edition of Ghost Light Theaters is sold out. Three copies of the special edition remain available through the link below.
FREE USA shipping included
Text and Imagery
Drawing inspiration in particular from the photo and text books of Wright Morris in which fictional narratives are paired with documentary photographs in a way where each compliments yet never describes the other, each book integrates an original, brief prose poem unfolding across the pages—like an intertitles in a silent movie.
Conjuring
Isn’t it amazing? Aren’t I the magician? I can make rabbits appear out of hats. I can remove a gold coin from behind your left year. I can pull a very, very long scarf out of my sleeve…
No, no. That’s all fine fakery. This is the real magic. Of mesmerizing in the dark. Of transfiguring into ghosts. Of fixing, as if in stone, forever more, or for a good while at least, a conjuring, a picture.
Architecture
The marquis and facade of the Stanford Theater in downtown Palo Alto, California.
Beacon Theater, archival mat board, Kozo paper slide, metal brads, electric light. Approximately 10 x 5 x 12 inches, 2019
The Art Deco architecture of the golden age of movie palaces is an integral part of each book. The elaborate beauty of these buildings speaks to the powerful and magical experience of movie-going to twentieth century audiences. Inspired by the Stanford Theater in Palo Alto, California, where I saw dozens and dozens of Hollywood Age films as a girl, I termed the theaters I made “Fantasy Art Deco” because they spring from my imagination. Each theater maquette was meticulously designed and drafted by me, then cut with a laser machine before being photographed (mostly as shadowy silhouettes) to create imagery for the books.
About Ghost Light Theaters
I grew-up going to the movies almost every week at the Stanford Theater in Palo Alto, CA—a restored Art Deco movie palace built in 1925. Showing only films from Hollywood’s Golden Age, I munched my popcorn and raisinets while memorizing Bogart and Bacall. This immersion in glorious black and white movies I consider my introduction to photography, and Ghost Light Theaters is an homage to that formative experience. Although I work with still photographs, my love of moving pictures influences my work—a single snapshot sets me to wondering: what’s the story? What frames came before? What happened next? For me, Ghost Light bridges the space between the decisive moment of a single photograph and the extended gaze of a movie—how can photography be both?
A theater is a lot like a camera, they are both dark spaces for holding pictures. I like to think that within both spaces, pictures take on a life of their own.