Detroit in Slides: The First Three Visits

In preparation for the Palm Springs Photo Festival, where I am showing the DETROIT: DEFINITION portfolio for the first time to photography and editorial professionals , I prepared a slideshow of impressions from these visits. With great thanks to Mack Avenue Records (Detroit-born! and the sponsor of the Labor Day Detroit Jazz Festival) and to their artist, Gerald Wilson and his Orchestra, the powerful music of "Detroit" from the DETROIT SUITE accompanies the presentation.

I hope you like it.





With great thanks to Gerald Wilson & Mack Avenue Records
“Detroit” from the Detroit Suite written by Gerald Wilson, Brynhurst music (BMI)
© 2009 Mack Avenue Records II, LLC
Gerald Wilson appears courtesy of Mack Avenue Records

All Photographs and Presentation/Compilation ©Copyright Sara Jane Boyers. All Rights Reserved.

DETROIT: DESTINATION

New York Magazine's "Five Point" travel article on Detroit:
http://nymag.com/travel/weekends/detroit/

Lot of them already visited, more to explore. Not just to tour the ruins, as so many feel is so trendy but to meet and discover a complex and amazing city and people.

Woodward Windows

From Street Culture Mash from SCM Sudios in Detroit: WOODWARD WINDOWS, artists working on "sprawl art," filling the commercial vacant shop windows, still so emblematic of Detroit.

SCM Studios is a full service creative agency specializing in experiential marketing. Love what they are doing and how they are using their blog to show their work and direction.

When wandering Woodward, I photographed several windows - this one below published earlier on my blog - that always had seemed to be an artist project. Now realizing that is probably what they were.

Learning about my birth state: The 175th Birthday of Michigan

From today's Detroit Free Press, a selection of historic photographs of Michigan.

http://www.freep.com/article/20120126/COL32/201260472/Ron-Dzwonkowski-Michigan-175-years-old-vital-ever

Year-end Impressions/DayFIVE: 65 Years from Detroit

Day Five 2012 is my birthday, my 66th. Ironically, I am spending it reviewing LA photos from the '80s for a group show to open soon in Los Angeles. In the '80s, I had no emotional link to Detroit. I was in my '30s and not interested in my roots to a tenuous city where I had no family and spent only one year of non-verbal infancy. It now surprises me how little I knew of my birth city.

But since birthdays are about people, no matter how much I would like to avoid this in my photography, it feels important that this last "anniversary" reflection depicts them, the people of Detroit.

Detroit is a friendly city. Perhaps due to what they call "Mid-west values," but also just in the character of the residents, those whom I have contacted have given me amazing access to their homes, their businesses, their lives. They have shared stories of Detroit and of their trials and their dreams. Those whom I have met while photographing on the streets, at festivals or in neighborhoods have been open and willing to share favorite spots in their city, willing to share their lives as I do my work.

Before my first visit, I was told that as a single woman, carting expensive camera equipment, I could not walk Detroit streets alone. While there is crime in Detroit and a lot of desperation, and while I remain cautious in my work as I do in any urban city, I have encountered only curiosity and welcome from jobless citizens on the streets and have felt free walking all around.

It feels like the people of Detroit want their story to be told, but told from all sides. They know they've become a poster city for not all the right reasons but they also understand how they are not alone. What has been happening in Detroit in the 65 years since I left - perhaps my father one of the first to "go west, young man," but certainly in later decades others for reasons not only of Western opportunity but for escaping civic issues within - is happening elsewhere in the United States. What can save us is also listening to Detroit. Its citizens are aware of the pitfalls of too much "one-industry" focus, of civic governance out of control, of educational opportunity wasted. The right people for Detroit are already there. I am honored to have already met so many of them.

The Faust Family, owners of my original family home who have so graciously welcomed me into their lives.

Eric Jackson from Pinehurst, watching out for the neighborhood.

The many union members who chatted with me at the Labor Day Parade.
Those (including Daryl Howard above) in horticulture, bike repair & leadership programs at Earthworks Farm.
"J," who checks in on the Heidelberg Project when the artist is away.
Isabelle and her mother from further upstate who were having so much fun at the Hoedown.
Richard Harlan who is a fountain of Ford history at his Coneys in Highland Park.
Several of these marvelous kids at the Penrose Art Garden.
At Eastern Market on a market day.

Thanks to all of you (and many others) for making this first year of Detroit exploration - yes "definition" - for me and for Detroit what it has been.

Year-end Impressions/DayFOUR:Abstraction In A Desolate Space

The fourth day of my first visit to Detroit last year was my birthday and on that day I reported from not only that Thursday but the previous day's journey through the emotional urban landscape - the urban decay and abandonment - for which Detroit has been too well known. It was overwhelming and still is.

That said, one can learn from this landscape if one regards it not as "ruin porn" but, as did the photographer Andrew Moore, as a lesson - one of Ozymandius - that moves us cautiously upward and forward. I cannot deny that I am seduced by this and on my second visit, guided by the Detroit-based photographer, Dan Seybold, was able to capture one or two sights of this decay that horrified me but simultaneously allowed me entry into what was and what could ultimately become. If we recognize the art, then we can recognize what needs to be recovered.

St. Agnes' Catholic Church in New Center was such a visit. Abandoned. The parochial school of Rosa Parks and one I've before commented upon here. Shorn of defining characteristics but replete with emotion and spirit.

Rather than looking at these images with condemnation, today I see them as representing hope.

Update:

I do see the hope but even today, just found this article, originally posted in the Detroit Free Press this past December: http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2012/jan/01/churches-for-sale/

Year-end Impressions/DayTHREE: Notwithstanding, there is always beauty

Street Scene/Fall in Indian Village

Much of what I have experienced so far in Detroit is the greater downtown area. At times life there seems vacant except for festivals but it is also is where the larger surge for commercial and residential renewal is happening.

Within Downtown and slightly farther out are also the historic Detroit neighborhoods. The suburbs. Still in Detroit although I continue to be amazed by those who do not consider themselves part of "Detroit," when they are. The names are intriguing (NOT in any geographical order here): Indian Village, Grosse Point, Northwest, Southwest, Eastside, NW Goldberg, Corktown. Mexican Town, Hamtramek. Boston Edison, Palmer Woods, Brush Park, Eastern Market, New Center, Midtown and Downtown.

I've traveled many of the above and probably others when I didn't even know where I was. Some sound like a developer's romantic dream. Others representative of an earlier pragmatism.

What I've found so far: there remains character to each community as it evolves over the decades, often into something else. Boston Edison is lovely, a quick left off Woodward just short of Highland Park (also a community but a separate city) on a drive north, with resplendent trees and lovely grounds. Or almost for the hints are there of a future that presently does not foretell as much hope as before. Similar to parts of Manhattan in the '70s: one block is perfect, the next not so safely traveled.

That said, I am in awe of the houses and the communities. In Lafayette Park, Mies Van der Rohe designed the most beautiful townhouses. Cranbrook Academy further out enticed world class architects and designers who left their mark on the city, visible if only one looks for it, mixed in with signs of wealth and culture of an earlier age but, in many districts even still beautifully respected and kept up by new classes and cultures. In Palmer Woods, a mixed racially, culturally and beautiful suburb with community gathering together for music, for support and culture.

Palmer Woods, above Seven Mile

Eastern Market and Midtown are lofts rivaling some of those in New York. In Corktown and elsewhere is energy and life - Slows BBQ! - reminding me of early Soho in the 80s. In Brush Park, many beautiful homes in dis-array BUT many also in renovation where the unattended gardens fight back themselves and demand a beauty uplift.

Brush Park, Spring

In the Northwest, the site of my original family home, there is community and neighborhood.

I feel the pull of an urban/suburban city. A place with a vibrancy yet to discover in anticipated visits. Perhaps even a new home in this mid-west milieu that doesn't yet resonate with me, a child of the Southern California beach, with its reputed "mid-west values" and industrial strangeness. Yet one that all of me wants to further explore.