In this preview from the Vancouver episode of Season 8 of Art in the Twenty-First Century, artist Stan Douglas describes the making of his 2008 photograph Abbott & Cordova, 7 August 1971.
Depicting a careful restaging of the 1971 Gastown riots, the photograph shows Vancouver police attacking a peaceful protest organized to demonstrate against weeks of arrests by undercover agents. “Almost always my works are allegories of the present, as well,” says the artist. “That event made this neighborhood what it is today.”
“Almost always my works are
allegories of the present…”Stan Douglas