And the crash turned into a benefit...

For had I not had the disk crash, I may not have gone back into my files so quickly. In that process now, several months from January's trip and looking toward May, I am discovering more that I want to print, understanding the city more even from that first quick visit. Yet I am also struck again by the bleakness of a city in the despair of the times. In the despair of the winter.

The emptiness of a declining population and the sparse vistas of a winter environment with a population, especially one with a high rate of poverty, inside combines to raise the level of Detroit's drama.





That said, the year is moving seasonally toward renewal and in my next trip in May, I anticipate flowers and ... more people plus the growing sense that incredibly creative proposals and already working ideas are happening there. I just cannot wait to capture these coming moments of growth and light.

And, just to see how another Detroit native has returned home and sees the city, I absolutely love Allee Willis' blogs about her early April trip to Detroit, her hometown, as part of the 3rd Rust Belt to Artist Belt conference, where Seth Beattie, founder of the conference and program manager at the [Cleveland] Community Partnership for Arts and Culture says:

“In a city like Cleveland or Detroit, what we typically have seen or framed as a real disadvantage or problem in these communities (vacant housing, land and warehouses) actually is affording artists an opportunity to be creative and to go out and do something like the Heidelberg Project. ... An artist living in New York likely will not be able to experiment and open a gallery or launch a community arts project in a vacant parcel because there's such a scarcity of land... . Collectively, we in the industrial Midwest have things in our communities in which artists can carry out there work. There are specific amenities we have compared to newer cities. ...

Industrial cities in the U.S have strong arts and culture sectors because the arts were heavily endowed at the turn of the century, largely by philanthropists who'd made their fortunes in industries. That offers artists employment opportunities and a strong base of arts supporters .... [plus] very affordable access to space that allows artists to be creative and use their imaginations in the ways they live their lives."

Wish I could have gone to this but seeing the upcoming lineup of events in Detroit, know that I'll not be missing out on the opportunity to be there, right at this key time in the next year or so, to watch my home city rise.

Back in Step

I would have started the Detroit project at a better time but it was important to start on my birthday for this is a project that is inspired by my personal history and it felt right to do so.

The timing was however unfortunate in that my birth date was in the middle of an intense period of several ongoing projects; the three photo/art festivals in Los Angeles (I rushed from one, to Detroit, then back to another); the Chinese New Year celebration which I always photograph and thereafter write my quarterly newsletter; two deadlines for the continuing Chinatown project, FINDING CHINATOWNS, that I am preparing to exhibit this summer here in LA; and then, the curation and last evening's exhibition of PACIFIC RESONANCE, a conceptual open-air image-projection project for the Month of Photography LA (MOPLA) showcasing the work of seven noted Los Angeles photographers with original music composed and recorded by the well known LA avant-garde cellist, Michael Intriere.


An incredible evening but today, the day after and one month since my last Detroit post, I am eager to return to DETROIT: DEFINITION. One concern: in the midst of our rains (not Detroit winter weather for sure but for LA, quite extraordinary), an electrical blackout took out several external drives, especially the one with my Detroit work. I have the underlying raw camera files but all of my printed work was destroyed and I have to start and print again. Since I had delayed formal thank you's which were to include some early prints to those in Detroit who were so gracious to allow me into their lives, communities and businesses, and have been deadlining so since then, I was devastated and hope to get most of this out this week. In so doing the time delay does have a small benefit, allowing some sense of perspective from the emotion of that first visit.

Starting to plan the May trip and, in this long interim, Detroit is brimming with news, a lot more positive - a Whole Foods in midtown? - even amid the continuing economic setbacks. Have started to listen to the Craig Fahle Show on WDET. This past Monday, the 11th: a discussion of the return of Detroit's famed Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Although concerns remain about the DSO's longterm financial future, I look forward to hearing them hopefully in May. During the conversation, related to the DSO and other events in downtown Detroit: will those from the suburbs come into the city?

Living in Los Angeles where what is "downtown," and who will go there has been a constant albeit for different reasons - huge traffic gridlock (my other long-term project!) in LA - I am again struck by similarities between my home and my home city and yet how these parallels at the same time can starkly highlight their differences.

In March in LA, I attended SUPERFRONT LA'S Seminar DETROIT: A BROOKLYN CASE STUDY. Curated by Chloë Bass + Mitch McEwen, the exhibition and workshop consider Detroit "both as a specific city and as a set of circumstances." Speakers were urban planners, architects, social engineers speaking to some of the issues and solutions that have arisen in Detroit and that can be applied to other urban areas as well as urban experience elsewhere that may be applied to Detroit as the city itself reforms. While most participants in the project are not from Detroit and in fact, until a few days prior to the workshop both Chloë and Mitch had not been in Detroit (love their introductory video), a sharp and piercing discussion about the need for smaller cities and how to deal with land and infrastructure in one, such as Detroit and others, where the urbanization and sprawl has left bleak areas of fallow land and rusted pipelines, sewers and urban decay. The historic traditional land division (a left over from Civil War times) needs to be reinvented to allow for something other than the squared off blocks, reforming land.

Urban agriculture and green belts where once there was vacancy and decay again is posited as a significant part of any proposals. From the same April 11th Craig Fahle Show, positing the question of a public/private partnership for a vineyard project on Belle Isle.

Superfront has purchased a micro property (25 square inches) in Detroit through the LOVELAND project that seeks to use the vehicle of ownership as a personal reinvestment tool for the city. With this space, they have sought requests for proposals for the project, again adding the creative imaginations of many coming from the arts and architecture, environmental and urban planning factions to continue a discussion that is really about what this 21st century will be. In Los Angeles, models for that RPF are in exhibition at SUPERFRONT LA through May 20th, located at the Pacific Design Center (Blue Building SteB208).
Plans are being made to bring the exhibit to Detroit this summer and I am presently reading SUPERFRONT's book on the project .

EMERGENCY! and emergencies.

We rally for disaster. We rally for change.

At this moment, a day after one of the most powerful earthquakes in recorded history with a resultant equally powerful tsunami, the photographic community is rallying and has already created a website with prints for sale to aid Japan. The site is set up on the Wall-Space Gallery site where a print is available for $50, Ed. 10.

Mine is there: a detail in a buddhist temple in Los Angeles.





As a Californian used to fires, earthquakes and cliffs sliding into the ocean, I understand instantaneous disaster. What is more overwhelming from my perspective is the disaster that has been Detroit for the decline has been so slow that perhaps at first nobody noticed. Detroit has required years of failure for the nation and a world finally to see.

Luckily, those within the city have had it and those outside are aware. Both are moving and I am lucky to be there at this moment.

Even amid the stark wintry scenes I photographed this past January, it was clear that there is a vitality in Detroit, dormant under the snow but waiting to burst out in the Spring. This will not be the first time but I am privileged to be able to watch it again.

Finally, after almost a month and one-half of hard work on other ongoing and pressured projects, I am printing work prints of the quick shots taken during my winter visit. They are stark and, while not necessarily portfolio prints, they depict a true sleeping beauty, awaiting a lover's kiss. And that lover is Detroit itself, aided by the attention that it has itself created.

My photographic work has always been about difficult beauty. The way I see is in the detail that others often overlook. So in many ways, Detroit, a city I did not know but one I am learning about quickly, is the optimum place for me to be.

Finding out why I should love Detroit

More articles. More notes. The next trip: probably in early April. One week this time with again, probably too much to do.

Guess I'll at least have to eat at a Coneys....


By April Rudin
This Is My Detroit: What the Motor City Means to Me

In Between

In between.... Between the planned exploration visits. Between the conversations. Between the projects.

Noting. Reading. Researching. Facebook postings. Blogs. Newspapers. Videos.

Trying not to be overwhelmed by this city and all that's being written and discussed about it. Knowing that what I need now is to ingest, view, listen. I'll be photographing and talking again in Detroit soon.

But for now, I am in between.

During this time, it may be that the blog itself reflects this period. Passive yet active. Taking it in. Reflection is good.

Thus, in such a time, this blog may be just noting something about Detroit.

One of my favorite from the NBC Local4/Flashpoint.

The status of filming incentives (hey- I'm from LA and this is of interest both from Detroit and LA where I live)

And, the following commentary from Mike Binder, a native Detroit/LA_based film person (in many roles)

From the NYTimes today about the possibility of the first satellite Patent Office opening in Detroit.

Detroit from afar

I have no claim on the ability to speak to or for Detroit. A photographer with a tenuous link at most to my birth city, who hasn't lived there and until I return more frequently, am in truth like a "photo-tourist."

That said, in my briefest of visits, I found a vibrant city. A surprise to me, yes, for I too had heard only the most negative about Detroit and one, yes, that an urban-archaeologist might have to dig a little to find amid the very real mountain of abandoned and rotted buildings. But underneath and often not far from the surface, there is a vital Detroit filled already with multi-generational residents as well as newcomers with hope and, most importantly, ideas for the future.

An article in this week's Washington Post - "With Detroit in dire straits, mayor invites big thinking" - is informational, not just for its text but for the long list of often haranguing comments. Few are about what to do. Most are about political, economic and racial divide, not atypical of most feedback for anything these days. I wonder when we, as Americans, can live up to our promise and take positive action and not fall back on excuse or incrimination. History is important but it is most vital when considered in terms of effective progress. Those few individuals I have already met in Detroit, from a variety of economic, cultural, political and racial perspectives, for the most part were going forward.


Photo above: View up Woodward from the Penobscot.

Beginning to Feel a Native Pride

Still going through the photographs I took in Detroit just a couple of weeks ago. Seems so long ago but for a first visit, it seems as if I was just there.

This is a new project and as such competes for now with a schedule that includes my long-term project, FINDING CHINATOWN, photographing in the Chinatowns of the US & Canada, with deadlines for an exhibition looming.

It is a tribute to the complexity and lure of Detroit that, although mentioned in the News Hub blog that I was there to photograph the Chinatowns as well as exploring my own family landmarks, in my first four+ days I never made it to Windsor to photograph their Chinatown and, most significantly I never finished my own personal landmark list for wherever I ventured, there was another story to pursue. The journey is truly just
beginning and I cannot wait to return in the Spring (yes I could return before but hey, I may be native Detroit but in truth I am a Southern Californian and it IS cold there right now).

In the interim, I perked up in the middle of the Super Bowl as I watched the Chrysler commercial and Eminem and that incredible choir to see scenes that are now familiar to me, filled with a pride for a native city that I had not known. There is so much to see.