Title • where old meets new

This used to be a cinema, the Empire, and for as long as I can remember it’s been used for other things. I have a dim recollection of once seeing a film there, but I think I’m probably confusing it with another of the many cinemas that closed down during the last twenty years or so. Our town isn’t large – about 125K inhabitants – but twenty or thirty years ago there were at least ten cinemas. Now we have one big mulitplex and a couple of much smaller cinemas in surrounding villages. And while a ten screen UCI might be considered progress I don’t think it has any of the character of the many Victorian movie houses that have all but vanished from our towns and cities.

As for this shot: I’m not entirely happy with it. It’s quite striking, but I couldn’t get far enough away from the front of the building to get the angle I wanted. I was aiming for a more square-on shot; i.e. less of a size difference between 'Empire' and 'Cybernet'. That said, I guess the enforced perspective echoes the enforced replacement of the old by the new so it may well be more effective this way.