Eileen Cowin Untitled

Eileen Cowin (b. 1947, Brooklyn, NY) created an installation in the waiting area of the Long Island Railroad at Penn Station consisting of 11 backlit black-and-white Cibachrome transparencies. Each transparency depicts a narratively ambiguous scene—a hand reaching for a phone, three people standing in a circle, a woman’s figure silhouetted in a glass panel, a woman looking over her shoulder, a man at a pay phone grimacing, running legs in trousers rushing toward the viewer. Together, they constitute an affectionate homage to the genre of film noir. The rather oblique scenes are intended to stimulate the imaginations of the 150,000 or so commuters who pass through the concourse every day.