The Art of Hollywood
© Julia Fullerton-Batten
2026
Before green screens.
Before pixels replaced paint.
There was an illusion, made by hand.
At a time when the movie industry is ruled by digital perfection, I turn my camera toward what came before: a Hollywood built on canvas, pigment, and the invisible labour of master painters who created entire worlds behind the actors.
I travelled to Los Angeles to stand before these monumental, long-forgotten backdrops, survivors of another era. Once central to cinematic storytelling, they now linger in silence. By entering these painted spaces, I reanimate them, staging new narratives that resonate with the films we thought we knew, yet remember only in fragments.
The Art of Hollywood is a return to the age of hand-painted film posters, images that promised everything in a single frame: love, danger, glamour, escape. Borrowing their visual language, I construct carefully choreographed scenes in which reality and illusion collapse into a single image.
This work is not a homage.
It is a confrontation.
A dialogue between analogue craftsmanship and contemporary vision.
Between memory and reinvention.
Hollywood, once painted.
Hollywood, remembered.
Hollywood, reimagined.
click to view the complete set of images in the archive
Before green screens.
Before pixels replaced paint.
There was an illusion, made by hand.
At a time when the movie industry is ruled by digital perfection, I turn my camera toward what came before: a Hollywood built on canvas, pigment, and the invisible labour of master painters who created entire worlds behind the actors.
I travelled to Los Angeles to stand before these monumental, long-forgotten backdrops, survivors of another era. Once central to cinematic storytelling, they now linger in silence. By entering these painted spaces, I reanimate them, staging new narratives that resonate with the films we thought we knew, yet remember only in fragments.
The Art of Hollywood is a return to the age of hand-painted film posters, images that promised everything in a single frame: love, danger, glamour, escape. Borrowing their visual language, I construct carefully choreographed scenes in which reality and illusion collapse into a single image.
This work is not a homage.
It is a confrontation.
A dialogue between analogue craftsmanship and contemporary vision.
Between memory and reinvention.
Hollywood, once painted.
Hollywood, remembered.
Hollywood, reimagined.
click to view the complete set of images in the archive
