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My favorite Detroit photographer
Jan. 14th, 2011 08:48 amHaving a favorite local photographer in Detroit is kind of like saying someone is really good at taking candids at wakes, and yet I keep going back to Detroit Derek's photostream to look through his eyes. He's not taking snapshots of urban decay to play games in PhotoShop, he knows the history, feels the sorrow and the perverse stubborn hope, and shares it through his lens and his words.
Maybe, as he wryly suggests, the collapse of Detroit really is just a huge uncontrolled experiment. This photoset begins with a shot from the window of the abandoned Cass Tech High School. It was a magnet school for generations, and my grandfather went there for violin before becoming a machinist and mechanic. My brother has his hands, and we share different versions of that mechanical mind. My brother found a good niche in Michigan, but there was no employment there for my mind or hands. Detroit was just a temporary industrial gig, pulling people from the east and south for a few generations and then dwindling away.
Consider it a dress-rehearsal for peak-oil. The Detroiters shall inherit the earth because they won't be standing around with their thumbs up their asses when the lights go off--their lights went off ages ago, no one gave a shit, and they've been busy prototyping. Russians and Detroiters, man, navigating sick ratios of resources vs. corruption and pwning your post-collapse future.
Like I said, perverse stubborn hope.
Maybe, as he wryly suggests, the collapse of Detroit really is just a huge uncontrolled experiment. This photoset begins with a shot from the window of the abandoned Cass Tech High School. It was a magnet school for generations, and my grandfather went there for violin before becoming a machinist and mechanic. My brother has his hands, and we share different versions of that mechanical mind. My brother found a good niche in Michigan, but there was no employment there for my mind or hands. Detroit was just a temporary industrial gig, pulling people from the east and south for a few generations and then dwindling away.
Consider it a dress-rehearsal for peak-oil. The Detroiters shall inherit the earth because they won't be standing around with their thumbs up their asses when the lights go off--their lights went off ages ago, no one gave a shit, and they've been busy prototyping. Russians and Detroiters, man, navigating sick ratios of resources vs. corruption and pwning your post-collapse future.
Like I said, perverse stubborn hope.
