Hastings Park consists of a series of colour photographs depicting the four remaining buildings in Vancouver where over 8,000 Japanese Canadians were temporarily located and processed prior to being sent off to labour and internment camps during World War II. These buildings are the Livestock Building, the Forum, the Garden Auditorium, and Rollerland. Hastings Park is the site of the Pacific National Exhibition with its baby pig races, livestock competitions, mini donuts and demolition derby. Since it first opened in 1910, its buildings housed only animals, with the one exception of Japanese Canadians in 1942.

The images were created with a construction industry thermal imaging camera that employs infrared scanners that measure the heat signatures of objects and translates those heat signatures into an image where the higher heat signatures are made brighter and easier to see. Originally developed for military use during the Korean War, thermal imaging cameras have since been used by building construction technicians to identify heat leaks or structural weaknesses, by firefighters to see through smoke, by medical practitioners to monitor physiological activities such as fever, and by law enforcement for surveillance activities. Each colour in the photographs represent a different temperature, as opposed to a different frequency of light reflected off the surface of things, which is how human eyes function.

The thermal imaging camera functions as a medium through which the buildings of Hastings Park are asked, “Do you remember the time when people lived inside you? If so, are there any traces left behind? What’s beneath your surface? What else might we uncover?” The intention was to use such a camera to expose these buildings in a new light.