I must confess, I have not been in the Spirit of Detroit photo mood the past few months. Just imagine how difficult , how emotionally draining it is to drive around the city looking for dysfunctional street scenes, burned homes, ravaged stores, trashed neighborhoods, and homeless people. Photographing the city has never been ‘fun.’ I did it because I thought it was important for people to see the conditions in the city. And when I first started doing so, Detroit was a good example of post-Industrial decay, but it wasn’t evident that she was also a harbinger for things to come. Now, many large cities have, like Detroit, taken gas and on in free fall further down the spiral. Crash and burn. Greed is destroying our cities and the people who live in them.
Greed.
Back to the streets of Detroit, the city has changed. It used to be like a ferocious tiger/lion (depending on which sports team one supports) and the streets had a lot of attitude. And danger. I do not enjoy driving around the suburbs looking for trouble as I do in Detroit. However, I can find quite a few Virgin Mary statues in the suburbs, but not so many in Detroit, so I haven’t given up on the ‘burbs just yet. Lately, Detroit’s streets, at least the times when I invade them, usually early morning, have been tamed, feel beaten, on the skids. The trash has mostly been picked up, many abandoned houses have been boarded up instead of torched, and those that were torched have largely been demolished. Some areas where houses sat uncomfortably c lose to one another are now vast open fields with a house here or there, giving some areas a rural, not urban feel.
People are just trying to get by.
If you don’t see as many photos of Detroit flowing through my gallery, you’ll know why. I need a break. But then of course as soon as I commit this to writing, I’ll be back combing the streets, looking for shots. But just in case you don’t, or you see photos from my archives, since some of you are focused on freshness, you’ll know why.
This IS my season right now and when I drive around taking in all the color, roll down the window and feel the cool temperatures, smell the sweet aromas of decay…it’s refreshing and so very different than smelling the putrid smell of natural gas leaking from abandoned homes, and the occasional fermenting trash at the curbside of abandoned homes that have been gutted and left for pick-up.
