I am so sorry to have read last week of the passing of Gerald Wilson, 96 years old and a terrific jazz composer, bandleader. Among his many beautiful melodies is his Detroit Suite, written in memory of his formative years in Detroit (a graduate of Cass Tech), and from which I was so graciously granted the right to use snippets for my short early video on my DETROIT: DEFINITION project. 

The music of the Gerald Wilson orchestra has for years been recorded and distributed by Mack Avenue Records -  http://www.mackavenue.com/ - a company home-grown in Detroit and its founder, Gretchen Valade, is the major force behind the terrific Detroit jazz festival that takes place downtown over Labor Day Weekend.  I attended in September of 2011 and the streets were filled with people and great sounds.

Wonderful obits on Gerald Wilson below, some with music:

from the Detroit Free Press: 
http://www.freep.com/article/20140909/NEWS08/309090140/Gerald-Wilson-dies-Jazz-musicianhttp://www.freep.com/article/20140909/NEWS08/309090140/Gerald-Wilson-dies-Jazz-musician

from Mack Avenue Records: http://www.mackavenue.com/news/article/beloved_multi_instrumentalist_gerald_wilson_passes_away


from the Los Angeles Times where Gerald Wilson lived, played, composed and inspired many other musicians for years until his death: http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-gerald-wilson-20140909-story.html#page=1http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-gerald-wilson-20140909-story.html#page=1

from npr with snippets of his musc: http://www.npr.org/2014/09/11/347594917/jazz-arranger-gerald-wilson-dies-at-96http://www.npr.org/2014/09/11/347594917/jazz-arranger-gerald-wilson-dies-at-96

Here is my 2012 slide show of images from the DETROIT: DEFINITION project with soundtrack from the Detroit Suite, going back to my post about this in 2012  http://detroitdefinition.blogspot.com/2012/03/detroit-in-slides-first-three-visits

It is dismaying to see that the last time I posted to this blog was more than a year and one-half ago.  It is not that Detroit and my project have not been on my mind nor that I did not keep up with not only news but friends there, but that other exhibition deadlines - and a bit of life - took precedence and, like a manuscript put away to percolate for some months, sometimes years, DETROIT: DEFINITION needed some seasoning that only walking away for a while could give it.

Today, planning to return to Detroit on a late flight tonight, my focus on the project is still not fixed but far more developed than before, as is Detroit.  Time has helped me refine what it is I am looking for: a sense of past history, a sense of today and best, a sense of the future.  This is for Detroit but it is also for me for while it is true that most photographic artists put themselves into their work, the experience of Detroit has become a personal exploration as well.  As the city changes, it is also changing me.

I have always felt that capturing Detroit, a heretofore unknown city to which I am linked almost entirely and only by the fact of my birth, would be a challenge for me.  What I've found so far: that I am not only exploring through the construct of my father's footsteps on the streets of Detroit; I am actually walking in them, entering into buildings he entered for nine years of his life, traversing the city in which he lived.  A little eerie but I do feel comfortable here in a city where supposedly the comfort level is pretty low.

As part of that transformation: while my other projects concentrate solely on the visual story, Detroit demands more and my literary and my visual perspectives - offtimes at odds between the precision of the words and the abstraction of the view - have no choice but to join together here.  I suppose I knew this since I created this blog during my first trip in 2011 and wrote each night of that trip.  It is clearer now and even though not published here, there is also writing that accompanied my most recent visit, three weeks in the summer of 2013 and definitely much to write in this near future.

This short upcoming trip - another longer one is planned for mid-October - is a bit different for it is an exciting new venture/conference created by ....

"A broad coalition of partners — Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, corporate leaders, major foundations, economic development groups and others — have joined to create a powerful event that can help shape the future of Detroit. It's called The Detroit Homecoming." :

... inviting back those who lived and worked in Detroit over the years.  The conference: an intense two-day tour of the city and introduction to many of the individuals and businesses working for change, all in the hope that the invitees will return more, invest in, help renew what Detroit was and make it even better.

Lots of attendees from all over  - entrepreneurs, businesspeople, CEO's, filmmakers, and me. ... dressing in "corporate casual" ...

For this I've prepared a long overdue "update" to my original little magazine blurb about Detroit "reporting" on my very first visit there in January 2011.  As always happens, creating the little booklet, composing the "intro," and selecting sample images has forced me to focus and wish I had done this earlier.  I stay unfortunately true to habit, always needing a deadline/event to get stuff done :( .   That said, returning to my raw files to see what I missed the first pass through the experiences has uncovered several strong evocative images I missed when too close to the shoot.


All for the good.

I look forward to these next few days...

Below: an image I missed in the first pass but love now: from early early am (1:30am) at the so wonderful artist loft in which I stayed in Summer 2013.  The auto lights from the meat factory outside my window turned on whenever trucks arrived and would illuminate the loft at all all hours, and I would awake, grab the tripod and shoot.  Romantic light and so emblematic of the diversity of subject matter, just within and out my window in Detroit's Eastern Market.

And speaking of bridges to theCity...

I haven't followed this discussion very much, but I am now familiar with the name of the owner of the Ambassador Bridge, the present over-water link between Detroit and Windsor, CA.   Manuel "Matty" Maroun is also the owner of the Michigan Central Station, Detroit's iconic beautiful station that has fallen into such disrepair and stands as a symbol for all that has happened to this city.

Without learning much more for the moment, the Daily Show's take on the controversy about Canada's offer to build a new bridge is telling....

Bridge to Canada: Al Madrigal exposes slick-talking Canadian bridge builders operating in Michigan.

Some ideas are crazier than others...

Instead of fixing the city, good old American capitalism suggests the purchase of Belle Isle, a historic and so beautiful piece of land in the Detroit River that has been an escape for Detroiters for centuries, seceding it from the United States and making it a tax haven, a commonwealth for the wealthy. 

Yes it could bring a very needed One Billion Dollars to Detroit but we are back to times, even if it were legal which it is probably not, when a proposal such as this falls between one's soul and one's sense of well-being.   At the same time, it will become a fascinating discussion of what it really takes to help Detroit.

In many ways a suggestion such as this belies the very serious, also wealthy. corporations and individuals who are proposing, yes, radical schemes, that are concurrently healthy and forward looking for the PEOPLE as well.

Developer pitches $1B commonwealth for Belle Isle

This futuristic rendering of Belle Isle is one where it is a commonwealth separate from the U.S. with a unique governing tax system. (Artist's rendering)  From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130112/BIZ/301120319#ixzz2HmOhbhBV

This futuristic rendering of Belle Isle is one where it is a commonwealth separate from the U.S. with a unique governing tax system. (Artist's rendering

On a day in May 2011, arriving in the city in unseasonably hot and humid weather, I drove out to Belle Isle in late afternoon to see kids hanging on the perimeter road, cruising a little with music blending with the heavy atmosphere; families out for an end of winter picnic as the sun descending.  It felt free and safe in a city that does not often feel as such.

The land mass of Detroit is large, approx 120 square miles, with no doubt lots of land for parks and recreation but to develop it for commerce takes away its heritage and its romance.  I am naive to feel that one needs romance and mystery - a island across a bridge, a short one for sure, but even a bridge to nature, to relaxation;  destination within a city, is enough to hold citizens together, to meet on equal terms and understand how we all can combine to work and live.

From the article about other proposals for the city, some almost as crazy but some with more logic and human consideration behind them, especially from Detroit Future City: "It envisions a smaller city where the swaths of empty and blighted land become urban/green neighborhoods full of trees, ponds and urban farms. Detroit has 40 square miles of vacant land, according to city officials. That's close to the total land area of San Francisco.
"Even with all that vacant land, the wide open spaces of Belle Isle are unique. To decommission Belle Isle would be a great loss of a public purpose area," said John Mogk, a Wayne State University law professor who follows urban planning issues."

Hard Choices for Detroit

Thanks to Austin Black II of City Living Detroit for bringing this Detroit Free Press op-ed to my attention.

We who dash in and out of the city are not able to understand the complexity of failure, decision-making and risk, but are thankful to those within to give us material and opinion to better understand.

Stephen Henderson: In Detroit, there's no escape from hard choices

http://www.freep.com/article/20121205/COL33/312050018

Parking: Detroit

Yesterday I had to drive over the canyons in the rain to West Hills in, of course, the western region of Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley.  As it is getting on till christmas and out there on an errand but delighted that for once traffic was light on this rainy day, I stopped in at one of the Valley's ubiquitous malls to pick up a small item.

Driving through the acres of  concrete that consist of flat outside parking lots and then multi-level structures that accompany them and provide shoppers with as little foot traffic as possible so that all they can do is purchase is always an interesting experience, one necessitating certain social skills - who is that waiting an interminable amount of time for the one parking spot as close to the mall entrance as possible? - and time, while waiting to go around that one person, to engage in mind-numbing rumination of parking as a state of existence, at least in California.  

So it is with great curiosity and a bit of - wtf? - that I discovered, on Model D this morning, the website Michigan Needs More Parking, one of the oddest proposals for Detroit, and elsewhere that I've seen.

I started to lose it when I discovered their suggestion to turn beautiful Belle Isle into one large parking lot...


Below and posted before: my pic of the Michigan State Theatre, now turned into (turned back?) into a parking lot as well as one across from the historic Annis Furs Building of the parking lot where before existed Hudson's...

 

 

I have to admit I marvelled at the Facebook page's description of traffic in Detroit.

As a Californian who has to leave the beach two hours before a scheduled something in LA downtown, driving to appointments down Woodward, Detroit's historic first paved highway, or on the freeways even in the greatest rush hour seems like a Sunday drive.   In a city ripe for redevelopment, providing space to bring more cars into the city seems like the wrong direction in which to move.

Documenting the Turnaround/Europe

Detroit continues as a news item in both the American and European photo/news market.

In the States, some say, "enough already," about the many stories - positive and not - emanating from this city.  Some continue to worry - not without reason - that this almost caricature of decay over the decades could also happen to them.

Photos have been made, some haunting and emotional, most significantly by Andrew Moore in  his lush, poetic and startling project, exposition and book: DETROIT DISASSEMBLED.

In Europe, the Steidl book of photographs by the Marchand/Meffre team, taken at the same time as Andrew's, is also significant in guaging the interest in this decline of the American industrial power.

At November's LensCulture/FotoFest/Paris reviews I just attended, I found still an increasing amount of interest in what is happening to this city, a now fabled one perhaps more in the moral sense of Aesop, yet with hope expressed for the future.  I will return there this coming year of 2013 to continue my DETROIT: DEFINITION and I cannot wait to see the change after a year's absence.

In the interim, the Detroit Free Press, chronicles again hope for the turnaround that innovative spirit, youth and a government that is trying hard, seems to be successfully promoting:

http://www.freep.com/article/20121125/BUSINESS06/311250293/Is-Detroit-s-turnaround-turning-a-corner-Development-spreads-to-new-neighborhoods?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE