American Pie

A friend passed along this video made in Grand Rapids in response to those who also call it a "dying city."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPjjZCO67WI&feature=share



My entry into "career" life started with Don McLean's "American Pie," released by United Artists just days after I started work there. It's theme, even after 40 years, is again significant in the narrative of our lives for just back from my second visit to Detroit, I can see the same spirit and joy in this great midwestern city.


From Detroit's Annual Downtown Hoedown 2011, Saturday 14 May 2011.

Magazine Up

The first issue of DETROIT: DEFINITION, A WORK IN PROGRESS is published and available at the POD site, Magcloud. www.sarajaneboyers.magcloud.com

This is the first in a series of seasonal "reports" about my photographic exploration of Detroit, the city of my birth. I will return each season over the next year and one-half.

I've just returned from the second visit, "Spring," and am sorting through pics, thoughts and experience. Cannot wait for summer!

Back in Detroit

In Detroit already for 4 1/2 days. So busy I haven't yet posted.

On the first afternoon, last Thursday 12 May after a very early morning flight into unseasonably hot and muggy Detroit, a visit to Belle Isle at dusk seemed the thing to do. I was far from alone in that thought.


On the drive toward the western point: scenes seemingly sprung from Seurat's Grande Jatte. Electric green lawn descending down past the ducks and geese to the river. As the sun lowers, the dual points of Detroit downtown and Windsor, Canada narrow the straight in a lovely gray silhouette.

I drive the Island twice at least, stopping to watch the families headed over the bridge to picnic at the end of the day, then on a known section of the circular drive where are parked rows of cars with trunks open and groups of teens lounging in/leaning against each, their gaze more inward to the other cars than perhaps to the view, reminiscent of my youth cruising Hollywood Boulevard (never telling my parents) with girlfriends in the yellow convertible GTO.




The weather has now turned what I thought was unseaonably cold and rainy and yet all of this is Detroit in May. Notwithstanding, the streets now busier, tulips even in front of the more sketchier home, and on the weekend both at the Eastern Market with its annual flower day/weekend and at the confluence of the annual Hoedown, the largest free country music festival in the nation, and the Tigers at home, a diverse and fun crowd on the streets. More to come...

Just discovered, from last September's Detroit Free Press, a magical series on Belle Isle, its beauty and its concerns and those who are fighting against invasive species while inviting even greater exploration of the wonders of this park, larger than NYC's Central Park:
http://www.freep.com/article/20100905/SPECIAL05/110120001

Mother in Detroit

My friend and fellow photographer, Aline Smithson, asked us to send in a photograph of our mothers to celebrate today, Mother's Day 2011, on her terrific LENSCRATCH blog.

Immersed in my magazine creation, I could only think of this photograph of my mother. I am guessing is from December 1944, only a couple of months after her marriage to my father and her move to Detroit to be with him. The notation looks like it is 1944/45 but I am assuming it was '44 since she looks quite thin and if it were December of '45, I would almost be born and she would be looking very pregnant.

She is wearing my favorite pin, a '40s Alfred Philippe Trifari Jelly Belly Frog, that she gave me decades ago and that I wear to this day.

The window from which she is looking out is not the Pinehurst home. Possibly the address at 3444 Second Avenue? She looks delighted to be in Detroit.

When it comes down to it, Mother's Day reminds us that we are full of hope and thoughts about the future and how we accomplish that to which we aspire. For what is the birth of a child, if not a moment of dreams? The concept of "rebirth" speaks to renewal and a fresh new life. Detroit is in this stage.

I am looking forward to returning there at the end of this coming week.

Great Quote

Working on a magcloud magazine, a progress "report" of sorts with photographs from my first visit to Detroit. It is helping me define the work as I plan my second visit in two weeks! Over HoeDown weekend. Who knew there was a country music festival in Detroit?

Finding more pics that I like but also realizing how much I need to return and focus in depth where I have already been almost before I continue the journey.

Fell in love with Grace Lee Boggs quote from her 14 April 2011 interview on Democracy Now: "I think it’s very difficult for someone who doesn’t live in Detroit to say you can look at a vacant lot and, instead of seeing devastation, see hope ...see the opportunity to grow your own food, see an opportunity to give young people a sense of process, that’s very difficult in the city, that the vacant lot represents the possibilities for a cultural revolution."

At 95 she's got a new book out:

The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century

Motor City/Gridlock Wanting

I've been engaged in a longterm project, GRIDLOCK, stuck in traffic on the freeways and highways primarily of Los Angeles although gridlock is not unique to LA. Shooting from within the car with my little Leica D-Lux 5 (formerly 3) as I ride the clutch, hoping to catch that elusive moment when everyday traffic turns into something wonderful.

Why shouldn't I apply this to Detroit? ... .although it may not be about traffic, of which there is little (and do I mourn this? hmm.... ) is it about moments that perhaps I shouldn't get out of the car, or cannot. A few pics from January, cold and at first forbidding although that did quickly change. I rather like the elusive, grainy slightly out-of-focus/no tripod feeling with light reflecting off the dirty icy car window as I navigate the city streets.

And the highways ...

And even the bikeways...




And then, at times, there is an abstraction of form that gives weight to what I see, leading back to GRIDLOCK.

Finding More

Wandering through my prints with this almost three month perspective.

Above, 3444 Second Avenue, noted in some sort of application I had found among my father's ephemera as the first residence for my parents when first married in the mid '40s, before they bought the Pinehurst home. A brick building on the way to downtown, the only building that remains on the east side of the block.



I was there with Dan Seybold, the photographer/urban explorer who toured me around one day in January. Dan was also the guide for Andrew Moore for his project, DETROIT DISASSEMBLED. No one on the streets around here, except one lone man with his story of bad luck. A former auto worker like so many, reduced to asking for a handout. Dan chatted with him while I caught a couple of shots of the facade of this locked apartment house.

I have to deal with how to photograph with people around me. It makes me self-conscious and conscious as well of the time spent for my style is to wander silent and alone, my senses open to the light, the sound; something that at that moment catches my interest.

This is a different project and the circumstances of the journey - both from safety, from not knowing where to go, from the sometime necessity of company or guide - are making me realize that I cannot expect that I will capture what it is I want for a while. That said, I'll just go on photographing.