Ruins of Detroit

[Jim Evans]

Having been through and in Detroit many times over the last 15 years or so,  I found this work to be really sad and amazing at the same time.   The Ruins of Detroit porfolio is some the the best phtography of the area I have seen.    If I was in the area for an extended period of time and has the resources,  this would be a dream project for me.

Be sure to check out the other portfolios of Eastern Industries and Theaters as well. 

Sorry if this has been posted before.

http://www.marchandmeffre.com/index.html

[jake]

Reminds me of Polidori's photos of Chernobyl. Except that the contamination here is the gradual shift of the economy away from the industrial age, not radiation.

Some of those buildings are fantastic. Like the First Unitarian Church. No way you could afford to build those buildings today. Solid. It takes years and years of neglect to finally drag them down. I'll bet you Geary's Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain would collapse in a couple years if left alone.

[Alan Gage]

Amazing. Thanks for the link.

Alan

[LarryD]

I read recently that 3000 buildings are slated to be leveled this year in Detroit as stage one of a new open lands and making Detroit more rural within a city.

Then I read this an hour later. Looks like you have to get the paperwork right even to move ahead....

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/michigan/news.newsmain/article/0/0/1631741/Michigan.News/State.Puts.Detroit.Demolition.Plan.On.Hold.

[Dennis Gallus]

I grew up on Detroit's East Side.  Several images hit home.  I spent part of first grade at St. Margaret Mary's school.  I believe that I attended the first screening of 'Ben Hur' at the United Artists Theater.  And I drove past the Packard Motor Plant on Harper Avenue many times.

Even the Jesuit center of learning, the University of Detroit from whence I graduated, is behind walls now.  It was in an upper-middle-class neighborhood when I attended. 

It makes a guy sad.

Thanks for posting.

Dennis

[Jim Evans]

I read recently that 3000 buildings are slated to be leveled this year in Detroit as stage one of a new open lands and making Detroit more rural within a city.

Then I read this an hour later. Looks like you have to get the paperwork right even to move ahead....

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/michigan/news.newsmain/article/0/0/1631741/Michigan.News/State.Puts.Detroit.Demolition.Plan.On.Hold.

I read something similar.    The State/City is also toying with the idea of relocating people to more populated areas of the city.  It appears there are many neighborhoods that are essentially abandoned except for a few holdouts.  I can understand the desire to "consolidate" people into smaller and more densely populated areas.  It would have a huge impact on reducing cost for the city in terms or police, fire, utilities, infrastructure costs, etc.  However,  not sure how realistic it would be.   Making people move is never an easy task in terms of cost, logistics, emotions and even political issues.

One thing is for sure, reducing the physical size or footprint of such a large city is something that has never been done before.   It's almost to big of an idea to even wrap your head around.

[Jim Evans]

I grew up on Detroit's East Side.  Several images hit home.  I spent part of first grade at St. Margaret Mary's school.  I believe that I attended the first screening of 'Ben Hur' at the United Artists Theater.  And I drove past the Packard Motor Plant on Harper Avenue many times.

Even the Jesuit center of learning, the University of Detroit from whence I graduated, is behind walls now.  It was in an upper-middle-class neighborhood when I attended. 

It makes a guy sad.

Thanks for posting.

Dennis

My wife is also from the area and lived on the Northeast side of Detroit near "Anchor Bay?" for a while.   I think that was the area?   She was also very sad when seeing the images.

[jake]

I keep thinking of that Talking Heads song, Flowers.

[KirkT]

They call it ruin porn now - images of fallen Detroit.  These images don't do much for me anymore since I  see it constantly.  It's just to easy of a target; like homeless people and war images.

I lived in Detroit for quite a few years (30min outside now).  My backyard overlooked Gross Point - probably one of the richest areas in the state.  It was a disgusting contrast between rich and poor.  Police were on a nonstop patrol of the borderline pulling anybody over who wasn't white.  The locals put blockades on most of the streets to block traffic.

But it was weird too on my side of the street.  We were slated to get a big chunk of money for home repair and street repair and the local folks went apeshit on the people giving the news.  They called it gentrification and insisted that this was to push them out when all they wanted to do was give the homeowners a bit of help getting their neighborhood looking good again.

Somewhere, and I'll have to find the link, there is a great series of photographs by a guy who shot life in these ruins.  What I mean to say is that he shot not only abandoned lots and homes but shot the plants that have over grown the area and brought back some "life" to the local.  To me that was beautiful and showed, not only the ruin but, a positive light on the total effect. 

[martolod]

these are powerfull images
i had no idea that the detroit is essentialy a dying city
well, i refrase that. it's a dead city but it has not realised it yet.
it will become an urban wasteland just like some of the mining towns in england
completely abandoned
not that it's something new it has happened to other great cities over the millenia for one reason or another.

[jake]

They call it ruin porn now - images of fallen Detroit.  These images don't do much for me anymore since I  see it constantly.  It's just to easy of a target; like homeless people and war images.

This was criticism leveled at Robert Polidori and other photographers when they went down to New Orleans to shoot the aftermath using large format cameras. These arguments are interesting, but in the end, we live in a country where most people don't have any idea what is happening outside their front door. These baroque images redolent with neglect and rot in such over-saturated colors that the buildings look like dented moldering birthday cakes may be the only thing that will get anyone to actually pull their heads out of their televisions (where nothing ever happens except Tea Party coverage 24-7-365) and take a look.

I think war images might be excluded from the category of "easy target" given the level of danger for the photojournalists involved in taking them. And what's more, no one ever sees them because most newspapers don't want to depress their readers. So they rarely meet their audience anyway, easy or not.

But from an aesthetic standpoint, your point (if I understand it to mean that you'd like more than just a surface treatment of neglect) is well taken.

[KirkT]

Well, I need to think deeper with this thought:  What I meant about "easy" is how it is received by the viewer.  It's easy to look at these photos and know what you are "supposed" to feel.  You can look at it, move on to something else.  For me, there is so much of this stuff out there and, as a consumer of photographic images, I feel like I'm becoming bored at the same type of images with the same reactions. Granted, most people don't see these images everyday and are truly surprised.

I'm sure, as with much of the is photography (i.e., war, ruin, homeless) it's the consumer that is driving the "art".  War photographers have a deadline and a story to tell.  I'm sure they don't have the time to be uber-creative with what they present and, as much, I'm sure that they have photo editors that dictate what they can produce.

I'm sure this mostly reflects my tastes and overall boredom, but for photographers of his obvious caliber, you just come to expect something a little more; a little different.  Photos of homeless people and ruined buildings I expect to see from beginners of street photography and young people but, to me, just seems so trite from a full blown professional photographer.

Sorry, I'm sure this comes off as snobby and snippy and I apologize as it's the first thing I've put down this morning and I haven't the time to smooth out the edges.   

[jake]

Ubiquity doesn't necessarily equal trite. It might instead be a sign that something is f$%ked in society. If any two bit hack can walk out their front door and take a photo of a poor person or a ruin building, then the ubiquity may lie in the number of poor people in this country and the number of ruined buildings and even the number of two bit hack photographers, but it doesn't reside in the photograph itself. The photograph is proof of the other three.

And I still don't think you are comparing apples to apples when you compare the work here on Detroit with the work of a war photographer or photojournalist. The Detroit photos are not photojournalism. They are art photography that takes its modes of representation from the laws of perspective and arrangement that were worked out in the Renaissance. The photographer has the time to work out where to put the camera, what lighting to use, etc. A war photographer's primary drive is to record events. Compositional strategies come a split second afterwards perhaps, but they are not front and center in the same way that they are in these photographs of Detroit. Now, art photography has borrowed a lot from the aesthetics of journalistic photography in the last several years - Alec Soth, Brian Ullrich, Robert Polidori, etc. But it is still art photography.

There are quite a few Sabastaio Selgado photographs of workers in the offices of the tycoons who exploit them. That's why they are expensive. But that doesn't mean those images are easy. That just means that rich people have enough money to buy things without a conscience.

BUT, as I said before, if what you are looking for is more than a surface treatment of an issue - i.e. more than just a glossy photo of peeling paint - then I agree with you. There is something easy about photographing decay - it becomes decorative, not forecasting or forewarning.

[LarryD]

The world is decay we can't hide it. We are in spring the time of rebirth but son Spring is gone and just like all things made by Men and gods the began to decay from the moment they are born or created.

[KirkT]

Excellent points, Jorn.  And, like I said, my thoughts needs more work.  One must shore up their reflective equilibrium.  But your last paragraph sums it up.  I think the concept of war photography threw off our meeting of the mind, and if I discard that we may be on the same wavelength.   I agree that these photos can serve a point, but...in the same vein I fault the photographer for taking the easy way out. 

Selgado is an excellent example.  There is no cheap photo there.  He is a perfect example of what I consider to the be the better of documentary photography.  He goes above and beyond.  As does most of VII and Magnum (with possible exceptions) and others.