Empty cinema and theatre stalls evoke the ghost-like absence of departed spectators A trace of an echo of clapping hands, or an imaginary sense of eyes glued to the screen or stage, pervades the still-lit void. Rows of velvet seats have fallen like dominos, ready to be re-occupied by anonymous individuals booking for the next show. In the interlude, solitude winks at the missing audience, the purpose of the venue suspended.

For his ongoing series entitled Stalls, Raúl Belinchón has photographed typologies ranging from the opulent splendour of the Royal Opera House to the leopard-print tackiness of an Odeon cinema. Symmetrically framed, the arresting images capture the emptiness of these public places once the crowds have gone home, while juxtaposing various styles of interior architecture and design in cinemas and theatres across major European cities. There’s the cheerful décor of the UCI Empire Cinema in London, with its blue walls, yellow curtain, and red seats, versus the ornate, crimson classicism of the Principal Theatre in Valencia. Taken in isolated moments from the viewpoint of both the actor and the spectator, the perspectives portray “the space that the actor visualises and the one that the spectator observes”.

Born in Valencia in 1975, Belinchón conceives his projects as sequences of small stories. He employs a “story-telling device about absence” that enables him to reflect upon “what might have been, who might have been there, and whether the film was shown to a full cinema or one just half full.” The series suggests endless possibilities about atmosphere, productions, orchestral or soundtrack music, and types of audience clientele. We could picture people sitting at the back of the Gods watching a Russian ballet unfurling through rented binoculars, or movie-goers in the front row being swept away by startling special effects. By stimulating the imagination, the nature of the images becomes intentionally “abstract and surrealist”.

Belinchón’s motivation to photograph the inside of public places during instants devoid of human activity applied equally to Underground Cities. Futuristic and geometric in style, this earlier series recalls Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Emir Kusturica’s Underground and Vincenzo Natali’s Cube, as it criss-crosses the subterranean labyrinth of platforms, corridors, conveyor belts and staircases of Europe’s tube stations.

“By not taking photos of the individual, the scale and proportion in the image is missing, so what is left is a more disconcerting and disturbing picture, where colours and geometrical shapes create a strange atmosphere,” explains Belinchón.

“Nude spaces can produce fear, unease or distress in the viewer,” says Belinchón. “In my opinion, they are part of a moment that has disappeared, that’s not here any more, which passed and maybe never even happened.” Like trying to remember the actual fragments of a film versus our personal anticipation of the approaching scene.