Michigan Central Station

1997 - Photography (Photography)

Stan Douglas

location: Vancouver, Canada
year born: 1960
gender: male
nationality: Canadian
home town: Vancouver, Canada

Michigan Central Station is part of a larger photographic series, Detroit Photos , which includes images of houses, theaters, stadiums, offices, and other municipal structures. Continuing his fascination with failed modernist utopias, Douglas depicts Michigan Central Station as a monolithic, almost prison-like structure lording over a desolate landscape. Once the hub of industrial transportation, the station is now devoid of any human activity and lies fallow, surrounded by train-less tracks and vegetation-less ground. Douglas’s preoccupation with obsolete sites like this seems less concerned with revisiting or memorializing them than in reviewing the conditions of their failure.


Stan Douglas makes videos and photographs that draw on the legacy of modernism to explore the cultural, social, and political history of the twentieth century. This is evident in his reference to large-scale housing works and other public projects. It also surfaces, perhaps more unexpectedly, in his connections to that period’s cultural production, like the great “auteur” filmmakers and authors, whose grand and utopic artistic projects now seem impoverished.


Colors:



Ponderosa Pine IV
© » KADIST

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Tree on the Former Site of Camera Obscura
© » KADIST

Rodney Graham

1996

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Untitled (Breathless)
© » KADIST

Ian Wallace

2000

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Pipe Opening
© » KADIST

Jeff Wall

2002

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Empire's Borders II-Workers
© » KADIST

Chen Chieh-Jen

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© » KADIST

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Pipe Opening
© » KADIST

Jeff Wall

2002

As suggested by its title, Pipe Opening (2002) depicts a hole in a wood wall exposed by the removal of a pipe...

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© » KADIST

Yang Zhenzhong

2012

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© » KADIST

Enrique Ramirez

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© » DIANE PERNET

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Untitled (Celestial Motors)
© » KADIST

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2012

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© » KADIST

Stéphane Calais

2007

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© » THE RE:ART

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Serious Games 3, Immersion
© » KADIST

Harun Farocki

2009

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Tree on the Former Site of Camera Obscura
© » KADIST

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1996

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Good Life
© » KADIST

Danh Vo

2007

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Les Fleurs d’intérieur
© » KADIST

Danh Vo

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© » ARTSJOURNAL

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© » LONDONIST

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David Hockney lights up London with a festive art installation at Battersea Power Station.
© » ARTSY

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The Ship of Fools Mooring at the Train Station
© » KADIST

Liu Yu

2016

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