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.
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