16″x 24″ Take A Seat – Gem Theater Cairo, Illinois

16″x 24″ Long Exposure Photograph with color light from a Protomachines flash cascade across the seats of the Gem Theatre. You open up the history book of Cairo, IL and you will squint and wince and shake your head in disbelief the entire read-through. The Gem Theatre opened in 1910, but a couple decades later, a fire raged through. The Art Deco elements you see today are from the rebuild in the ‘30s for $2.8M in today’s dollars. In the ‘90s, when the Gem was donated to Cairo, the Peace Corps tried to save the building by replacing the roof and renovating the lobby and marquee. Any and all redevelopment has stalled out. Something sad lurks under the land and water here. Attempts to succeed are met with walls as thick as the levees that surround this river town.