This morning on CBC radio I listened to an interesting feature interview with James Griffioen who lives and works in Detroit documenting the decaying side of this hard-hit city. I did not know of him till this morning and visited his website. He is a Michigan-born lawyer who left a promisoing law practice in San Francisco to return to Detroit and raise his family there. Compelling work on one of the nastiests cities in the US. Check it out.
http://www.jamesgriffioen.net/
Some of the best contemporary large format work I've seen. I wouldn't call Detroit a nasty city, just an extreme victim of economic hollowing-out.
It is great work, thanks for the link.
Wow!
Powerful. Haven't been to Detroit in over a decade, it is depressing to see the implosion of a once great city.
Amazing to see what post-apocolpyse looks like in real-time. It'll be interesting to see if it all just reverts back to prairie or farm land.
He has cajones the size of church bells to wander around with a camera there. I've done it a few times in Newark, NJ and I chalk it up to being some of the stupidest things I've done. I keep toying with heading to Detroit, but the lack of armed escort always seems to kill the plans.
This kind of decay is not new. It has happened throughout history - where one culture is abandoned or replaced by another. Cultural evolution so to speak. As photographers though, we have a rare opportunity to document the transitions in all their ugliness and glory. Images can make a powerful statement about this kind of evolution as witnessed by Mr. Griffioens' work.
Reminds me of a series I focused on in the early seventies when I freely roamed the ruins of the Union train station in Worcester MA. There is a erie feeling in such places
that seems to convey a sense of wonder at it all but at the same time delivers an intensity of purpose and focus that can produce some great images.
Nice stuff.
Nate Potter, Austin TX.
I lived for seven years in Detroit, and another 24 in a nearby suburb. I've seen many of these places, and I think he has really captured the place.
Not to detract from what he has done, but there are literally dozens of photographers in Detroit (myself included) who have been doing the same thing for years. Some of us present positive images as well as the negative. Some pander exclusively to the lowest common denominator, if you will.
Strange, but there was another large format photographer, an immigrant from Easter Europe, who set out and made a great book about Detroit's architecture, because somebody pissed him off by making denigrating remarks about the city. I came upon him while preparing to make an image downtown a couple of years ago. Fascinating individual.
Funny how his book of excellent photography has not, to my knowledge, been featured by the major media...
I have wandered Detroit for the last 6 years with Hasselblads, Speed Graphics, 8x10 and 11x14 cameras, and a Fuji S3 (brand new), not to mention several professional grade lenses, to boot. I carry no gun, and never felt the need for an armed guard.Originally Posted by Terence McDonagh
Exactly.
That is why I am trying desperately to escape.
Detroit is a blue collar town, as is the whole of SE Michigan. Unfortunately, several generations of blue collar traditions have precluded the adaptability of the general populace. Detroit is on an international border, has a once magnificent island between it and Canada, and some of the most extraordinary architecture to be found in the States. Yonge Street in Toronto is analogous to Woodward Avenue in Detroit, with the benefit of an international border thrown in for good measure. Unfortunately, the insightful, progressive, visionary attitude that made Toronto what it is today does not predominate in Michigan. The suburbs and the city have been at war for nearly 40 years. It is difficult to make progress under such inauspicious circumstances.
I have a friend, from New Brunswick, originally, who told me I should assemble the photographs of decay I have made into a body of work. I was going to do this, and call it Hurricane (name redacted here, so as to avoid tempting the moderators to delete this post for political content). I think my take on the subject reflects a completely different point of view, given much of the same subject matter.
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