Behind the Scenes with Stan Douglas: Penn Station's Half Century, 2021

Go behind the scenes on Stan Douglas' historical recreation of Penn Station in the first half of 20th century. Produced over a four-day photography shoot in Vancouver, during which over four hundred actors were scanned and re-dressed in one of five hundred unique period costumes, before being posed digitally. The architectural elements were created through an intensive CG post-production process carried out by an Emmy-nominated visual effects studio.
Since the late 1980s, photography has been a central focus of Stan Douglas’s practice. Penn Station’s Half Century (2021) represents Douglas’s most ambitious exploration of the medium to date. Made with a hybrid of CG and staged photography, the series examines how history manifests in specific places and transitional moments in society.
This body of work was commissioned by Empire State Development in partnership with Public Art Fund on the occasion of the dedication of New York City’s new Moynihan Train Hall. The series looks at the life of the city’s original Pennsylvania Station-from the time of its inauguration in 1910 to its eventual demolition in 1963 to make way for Madison Square Garden-through nine vignettes arranged into four thematic panels for the new train hall, and also editioned individually as photographs.
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