Las Vegas, New Mexico, July 12, 1982 (Fort Union Drive-in Theater)

Images(2)

Las Vegas, New Mexico, July 12, 1982 (Fort Union Drive-in Theater)

Artist Steve Fitch (American, born 1949)

DateNegative 1983, print 2021

MediumPigment print

DimensionsImage: 15 × 19 in. (38.1 × 48.3 cm)
Support: 16 × 20 in. (40.6 × 50.8 cm)

ClassificationsPhotograph

Credit LineGift of Steve Fitch, 2021

Object number2021.10.11

DescriptionBottom half of composition shows grass and prairie, top half is sky with dramatic cloud formation across width of picture. Small outbuildings scattered in right half of picture, two red and two white. Long solid wall or fence across width of picture with tree in front of it at far left. Wall or fence is blue and is painted with the words: WELCOME to the FORT UNION Drive-in THEATER. Behind wall is a drive-in theater lot with a large white movie screen at approximate center of page with individual sound stations for cars in front of it. Utility wires visible in foreground.
eMuseum Notes

Emuseum Notes

Artist Steve Fitch loves the post-World War II American icon of the drive-in theater and photographed them in his travels across the country and particularly in the west. While he often presents the screens as odd geometric shapes in the landscape, here the screen is part of a large composition where it dominates the surrounding plains but feels at home. Fitch organizes the picture into a series of flat areas of color and divides the rectangle of the paper with the horizontal lines of the wall and the horizon. The blank screen of the unused theater echoes the emptiness of the setting, despite evidence of human intervention.

On View

Not on view

Terms