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
IRL (In Real Life)
© Niccolo’ Rastrelli
IRL (In Real Life) is an ongoing photographic project that explores the identity and representation of Generation Z — the first to grow up in a world where real and digital life merge seamlessly, redefining boundaries, relationships, and forms of personal expression. Through a documentary and intimate approach, the project portrays young people within their most personal spaces — their bedrooms — juxtaposing these portraits with images taken from their smartphones: selfies, stories, posts, and screenshots that shape their online presence. Two visual worlds, one physical and one digital, intersect and overlap to authentically narrate the complexity of contemporary youth.Born between the late 1990s and the early 2010s, this generation uses images as a language — a tool for identity and belonging. IRL observes how, from Milan to Delhi, Nairobi to Buenos Aires, the same digital gestures and symbols have become a global code, while still reflecting different cultures, dreams, and contradictions.
The project’s ambition is to expand across all continents, building a visual archive capable of capturing both the universal and intimate dimensions of a connected generation. In the long term, IRL will evolve into a series of international exhibitions and a book — creating a space for dialogue between young people and adults, cultures and languages, the real and the virtual.
click to view the complete set of images in the archive.
Frida - A Singular Vision of Beauty & Pain
© Julia Fullerton-BattenSince she died in 1954, Frida Kahlo has become an iconic figure in the art world and beyond. It’s hard to sum up her impact because it spans art, culture, politics, and social issues. Her unique vision and fearless self-expression have made her a ‘Goddess’ figure whose legacy continues to grow, inspiring new generations of artists, activists, and admirers around the world.
Her work is a vivid and complex tapestry that weaves together personal suffering, cultural identity, and political beliefs, but it’s her relationship with Mexico that amazes me most. Her deep love for her country is central to her art, with its heritage manifesting in the themes, symbols, and styles she used.
Through her paintings, Kahlo offers us a unique perspective on Mexican culture, identity, and the human condition, leaving an indelible mark on both national and global art history. Even today, 70 years after her death, her work still feels very contemporary.
When I look at her paintings, I feel inspired to be brave.
When I look at her paintings, I feel her love for Mexico.
Frida Kahlo is an inspiration to so many people. Still, I think female artists have a special bond with her power and integrity, her ability to openly reflect on the most vulnerable parts of her existence, whilst maintaining her inner strength and dignity.
I came to Mexico in 2022 for my retrospective exhibition and fell in love with everything Mexican. The colours, the people and the rhythm of life…..so different to London. I was so amazed by everything I encountered that I knew I had to return to shoot an in-depth personal project.
Being inspired by the latest Mexican DIOR Collection 2024 and working closely with a film costume designer in Mexico City, it was essential to source authentic, handcrafted Tehuana dresses from Oaxaca, the traditional outfit Frida wore to reflect her love of national and cultural identity; her eye-catching Tehuanas capture the vibrancy and strength that are unequivocally Frida.
With the help of local people in Mexico, I was given access to hidden and secret locations, such as an abandoned mansion right in the heart of Mexico City, a private residence designed by the internationally renowned architect Luis Barragan, ancient haciendas steeped in history and the creepy doll island on Xochimilco, famous for its floating gardens and full of mysticism.
click to view the complete set of images in the archive
More Than Half
© Thandiwe Muriu“Milk and honey have different colours, but they share the same house peacefully.”
-African Proverb
Thandiwe Muriu immersed herself in the tradition of Japanese textile craftsmanship. Historically, textiles have been a meeting point for many cultures, with the influence of trade, global events, and the intermingling of traditions woven into their fibres.
Indeed, Muriu’s native Kenya and Japan have a linked history through textiles, too. The East African kanga was printed by Japanese manufacturers as early as the 1930s, and the tie-dye technique finds parallels in the Japanese shibori. Muriu’s journey through Kyoto’s fabric landscape ultimately inspired a new chapter of her Camo series, More Than Half, which intertwines the bold languages of both the kimono and wax textile. Uniting two visual vocabularies, she reflects on the expansive theme of belonging and one's place in a community. In the exhibition 一如 (Ichinyo), Muriu shifts her focus from camouflage to coexistence, anchoring her subjects in the renowned symbol of Japanese culture, the kimono, while setting them against a widely accepted backdrop of ‘Africanness’, the wax textile. By doing so, she aims to recognise the experience of Afro-Asian (Blasian) women, whose identities naturally bridge two cultures. Muriu’s portraits assert that both origins form a singular, unified presence, and channel the spirit of 一如 (Ichinyo) – a Buddhist term meaning “all things are fundamentally one” and expressing that what may appear divided is, at its core, already whole.
click to view the complete set of images in the archive
More Than Half, was created as part of KYOTOGRAPHIE African Artists Residency.
Hospital
© Alastair Philip WiperEvery day, in hospitals like this one, people arrive for work and hold a stranger's life in their hands. Literally.
They do it the way others might prepare for a performance — focused, unhurried, running through the same rituals before crossing into a space where the margin for error is invisible. Flesh and metal. Precision and mortality. The most extraordinary things, made ordinary by repetition.
We think we know what a hospital looks like. We've seen the corridors, the scrubs, the machines. But something is happening here that familiarity has made invisible — the fact that this is, if you stop and look at it, completely insane that this is possible at all.
click to view the complete set of images in the archive
InstituteTM (collectively Institute Pictures, Institute Studios, & Institute Artist) is redefining how stories are produced and told in the 21st Century. Founded by Producer Frank Evers and Director/Visual Artist Lauren Greenfield, we are a multiplatform production company representing auteur-driven storytellers across commercials, photography, fine art, film, and technology — and producing original work across every screen that those stories live on. Our multiplatform expertise and established global relationships in entertainment, commercial, fine art, and journalism create unmatched reach and cross-pollination of creative work. A film commission informs a photography campaign; a fine art practice shapes a commercial; an editorial relationship opens a documentary. Few companies operate fluently across all of these worlds. Institute was built this way from the ground up.
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