Phantasmagoric Places: Local and Global Tensions in the Circulation of Stan Douglas's Every Building on 100 West Hastings

AbstractStan Douglas's Every Building on 100 West Hastings (2001) represents a seamless panorama of one block of the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver, a neighborhood known as “the poorest postal code in Canada.” By documenting the block in detail, 100 West Hastings functions as critique in its local viewing context by focusing on a discrepancy in the triumphalist narrative of global capitalism; while the rest of Vancouver has recovered from deindustrialization to participate in the global economy, Douglas's image demonstrates that the Downtown Eastside has declined, becoming an anxiety-inducing foil for the city. Despite these local significances, the political impact of the image changes when viewed in other contexts, including London's Serpentine Gallery and the lobby of Toronto's McCarthy-Tetrault law firm. This article charts these divergent readings of the photograph, attending to the ways locale is understood and questioning the limitations of fine art photography as a form of social critique.