Ontario Theater, Washington DC Giclée Art Print (Multi-size options)

NOTE: Please allow two weeks to ship.

Ontario Theater - 17th and Columbia Road NW Washington DC, 8/1984

Part of a collaboration with DC photographer, Michael Horsley! Michael documented crucial scenes of Washington DC in the 80's and beyond. His images of vintage, dirty-gritty DC have been a major source of inspiration in my own art so I was more than pleased when he agreed to let me do my own colorization to some of his iconic photos. Some of these subjects are still extant and some are long-gone, but all serve to tell a story of our Nation's Capital from a street level. In Michael's own words:

“I would wander the streets, alleyways, taking photographs of things that looked like they were in transition, or they were from another time and they were still kind of hanging on. No one really went downtown after 5 o’clock. Washington’s old retail core was dying and there was little to no nightlife. The city I portray is the city I saw at a moment in its eventful history; it is the city that I made my own.

I don’t view my photographs simply as historical documents or nostalgic time capsules. They are a collective memory of reality of a certain time. It is too easy to look at images and fixate on the past because things are different now, but when I took these images they were very much real right in front of me and that reality continues to exist as it was. However, what has been depicted is very much a subjective reality based on conscious and unconscious choices, so the environment that I captured is a personal city.

The Ontario was the site of some amazing punk rock shows. I think I only saw one or two movies there. This image is one of my earliest photos of Washington in the 1980’s. I really did not know a lot about photography and I was more influenced by cinematography and this image is an emulation of 1970’s movies like Blue Collar or Taxi Driver. I was shooting from the hip, meaning I didn’t overly compose the shot just brought the camera to my eye."

This is printed via Giclée, a high end archival printing process that layers inks in a similar fashion to screening. The colors POP and the image is very sharp!

Paper stock is Moab Entrada Rag Natural - a warm white, 100% cotton, slightly textured, smooth fine art surface. All available options are standard frame sizes found at your local craft store, frame shop or IKEA! (frame NOT included)