Film & Video (Film & Video)

Wash and Go (2001) is divided into two stages and operates like a slide show. In the first part, the camera scans the interior of an apartment, focusing on elements of daily life to finally settle and frame a bottle of shampoo with the slogan “Wash and Go.” The camera isolates the word “Go ” and slides over the word “Away”, and then takes focuses on another slogan “The People You Need are only a touch away.” Afterwards, the camera gradually widens its frame to reveal a billboard campaign in the streets of Tirana. The images reveal a devastated city, dotted with scrappy buildings, and urban noises – each of who accompany this vision of abandonment.

Photography (Photography)

In the early 20th century, the Hercules Engine Company was doing a brisk business producing customized, heavy-duty engines. Seventy years later, when the United States military started opting for Humvees and stock parts, the company began to fail, and it entirely ceased production in 1999. Hercules Engines, Abandoned, Canton, Ohio (2011) depicts the manufacturer’s former productive core, gone fallow.

Photography (Photography)

In Restaurant, Canton, Ohio (2011), a convenience store offers food, liquor, and Coca Cola to an empty street. A series of boarded-up storefronts marred by peeling paint conveys a sense of the pre- or post-apocalyptic—the hush just before or after a disaster. The reds, pinks, and oranges of the buildings give off warmth, but the absence of human activity makes the glow eerie and strange.

Photography (Photography)

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.