Edited by Tommy Simoens. Texts by Stan Douglas, Christopher Phillips, and Pablo Sigg

Published on the occasion of his tenth solo exhibition at David Zwirner in 2011, this richly illustrated catalogue debuts an extensive project by Stan Douglas that chronicles the burgeoning discipline of press photography in North America during the postwar period. Douglas has assumed the role of a fictional, anonymous photographer to create a series of images hypothetically produced between 1945-1951. To do so, he constructed a veritable “midcentury studio” using authentic equipment as well as actors to produce carefully staged, black-and-white photographs that painstakingly emulate the period’s obsession with drama, “caught-in-the-moment” crime-scenes, curious and exotic artifacts, magicians, fashion, dance, gambling, and technology. Midcentury Studio features an introduction by the artist and essays by curator Christopher Phillips and writer Pablo Sigg.