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.
