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.

Family By House

There are so many ways in which we are connected, whether by six degrees or by place and interest. In this case, it is "by house."

From 1946 to 2011, the Pinehurst House has seen children born, families in life and death.

Below: 20 January 2011, Maurice Faust/January 1946 My father and me, brought home. I posted a version of this before but with Maurice, representing his family home, it seems so much more significant, adding personality and life to this progression.

Over the Wing, 21 January

On board, waiting to fly home to Los Angeles. My section of the plane is silent so far for I have boarded early in order to get my cameras more safely stowed away

My view: over the wing. As I gaze out in the night, the dark wing obstructing the light and activity of a busy airport, I realize I haven't been on a plane since I started seriously photographing the 747 Wing House, still in construction in the hills of Malibu.

There I walk on the wings, now the roof, and think about how this strange behemoth, an aged Boeing 747, no longer able to serve its initial function, has been deconstructed and repurposed into an iconic symbol of something new, a home. Seen in this new light, it becomes something novel, something contributory to design, to culture. Without the vision on the part of the homeowner, my friend, and the architect, a leader in environmental and repurposing theory, this airplane might have become a few hundred/thousand tin cans.

It took vision and continuing commitment. It took engineers who had to think in a new way, to solve the problems of today - how do we attach an aluminium airplane wing to a structure so that it doesn't quite literally fly away in strong winds? So that it doesn't leak in torrential rain? Other than the building of a log cabin perhaps or the contemporary construction of off-grid structures, most homes require this type of interactive teamwork and a continual stream of invention.

So too Detroit, the home of many.

My "blank slate" is starting to pick up some chalky scribbles. No longer am I that native daughter with no preconception. For the welcoming citizens of Detroit are scratching out for me a design of this city, using their words, their deeds, their memories, their hopes and their mutual love and exasperation. It is there for me to see.

How will Detroit be repurposed, for isn't this what Detroit needs? Vision. Preservation. Encouragement. Investment and commitment.

Sunday, the 23rd, someone walked into a Police precinct house in Detroit and shot four police offiicers. The someone died. The officers survived. Yes, this could have happened in any city today with the violence that is eroding our cities. But violence of this sort so often arrives with questions unanswered. Detroit has enough frustration and anger and disappointment to lay the groundwork for such horror. If those who are there to help and those who will hopefully join in can figure out Detroit, perhaps we can figure out too what we would so like to ascribe only to Detroit but, in truth, is happening all around us.