Regarding the Detroit photos. The story accompanying them wasn't posted. It is a must read.

[snagglepuss]

I posted the photos of Detroit not realizing that a story accompanied them. I'm posting it separately as I don't want it lost on the other thread and to highlight that these photos by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre are from their new book The Ruins of Detroit. My sincere apologies for the oversight.


That said, has anyone wondered whether any photos were staged such as the one entitled Criminal Investigation Report, Highland Park Police Station? Well it wasn't, none of them were. The entire article is a must read. Read it and weep.


snip

In December 2001, the old Highland Park police department in Detroit was temporarily disbanded. The building it vacated was abandoned with everything in it: furniture, uniforms, typewriters, crime files and even the countless mug-shots of criminals who had passed through there. Among the debris that photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre found there in 2005 was a scattering of stiff, rotting cardboard files each bearing a woman's name.

In total 11 women had been cataloged by the police, including Debbie Ann Friday, Vicki Truelove, Juanita Hardy, Bertha Jean Mason and Valerie Chalk. Down in the dank basement of the police station, where "human samples" were stored – and had been abandoned along with everything else – the two French photographers also uncovered the name of the man who was linked to all of the women's deaths. Benjamin Atkins was a notorious serial killer. Between 1991 and 1992 he left the bodies of his victims in various empty buildings across the city.

snip


"As Europeans, we were looking with an outsider's eye, which made downtown Detroit seem even more strange and dramatic," says Meffre. "We are not used to seeing empty buildings left intact. In Europe, salvage companies move in immediately and take what they can sell as antiques. Here, they only take the metal piping to sell for scrap. In the Vanity ballroom alone, we saw four giant art deco chandeliers, beautiful objects, each one unique. It was almost unbelievable that they could still be there. It is as if America has no sense of its own architectural history and culture."


snip

Having photographed old buildings – "mainly disused theaters" – in Paris, they happened upon an image of Michigan Central train station in Detroit while surfing the internet for pictures of abandoned buildings. "It was so stately and so dramatic that we decided right then we had to go," says Meffre, "but we were naive; we had no idea of the scale of the project, of the vastness of downtown Detroit and its ruins. There is nothing comparable in Europe."






http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/jan/02/detroit-ruins-marchand-meffre-photographs-ohagan?intcmp=239




LINK TO THE PHOTOS OF DETROIT'S DECLINE


http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2011/jan/02/photography-detroit

[Mojorabbit]

1. I had the same thought

looking at the photos. I was amazed no one had salvaged some of the buildings. When we were renovating we were not wealthy enough to afford salvaged pieces but it seemed there was a big business dealing in them. If the buildings are not to be refurbished it is a sin to let the beautiful craftsman made parts of them rot away instead of salvaging what can be reused.

[onethatcares]

13. check out the open windows.

it's like they are no longer even worried about preservation, restoration or salvage. This american country has been built on the backs of the people that constructed those places and it's been tossed in the garbage by those that owned them.

You would think the american picker guys would be all over that dentist office.

[alfredo]

2. Detroit was a beautiful city. The Masonic Temple was a favorite.

http://www.detroityes.com/industry/index.html

The Grande Ballroom, and other night places were real jewels.


I've posted this before, this is where I lived when I first moved to Detroit. It was on Alexandria.

[sabrina 1]

3. That looks like a castle ~

Very sad about Detroit. I haven't seen the photos yet but will go try to find them ~

[alfredo]

4. The link I put there has a very good catalog of images.

It was a vibrant city, but the car industry and cocaine destroyed it.

[JNelson6563]

29. Yet the auto industry built it

I wonder how things would've turned out if more people bought our union built cars instead of foreign, non-union built cars?

Julie

[snagglepuss]

8. Here is the link.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2011/jan/02/photography-detroit

[sabrina 1]

15. Thank you ~

[quakerboy]

20. That is a crazy link

I do not understand the point of demolishing those old buildings. The hardened Uniroyal plant. I mean, couldn't they be converted for use as housing, or something? It seems like it would be more work to take them down than it would be worth, unless there is some kind of boom economy where the space was desperately needed for something.

[alfredo]

23. They become a public safety issue. Either tear it down or,

some asshole will set it on fire.

[quakerboy]

24. A building hardened

against bombardment seems unlikely to go up in flames so easily.

[alfredo]

27. I was talking in general, not that particular building.

[RandomThoughts]

5. Has anyone checked were the people went?

Someone should check to see if there are any bullet holes in police stations, or indicators of a struggle.


Just to cover every possibility.

The papers left in the police station seem to indicate some sort of evacuation.

Did a rebellion chase out the police? Is that why they brought in the bull dozers.

Did some terrorist incident occur leading to evacuation.

Did some worse thing do some kind of ethnic cleansing, that has happened in other countries.

Did they all move away, and if they did, where to.


Has anyone looked to account for the people that lived in that neighborhood?

Side note, no way to know if the area of Detroit really looks like that, might be a metaphor for lions.

[Foo Fighter]

11. Oh, stop with that BS. Did you even READ the article?

Here's a quote:

"In December 2001, the old Highland Park police department in Detroit was temporarily disbanded. The building it vacated was abandoned with everything in it: furniture, uniforms, typewriters, crime files and even the countless mug-shots of criminals who had passed through there. Among the debris that photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre found there in 2005 was a scattering of stiff, rotting cardboard files each bearing a woman's name."

No mention of "bullet holes" or a "rebellion that chased out police or a "terrorist incident" anywhere in that article, even though we all know how "those people" are. :eyes:

Go peddle your RW crapola somewhere else. I'm sure the people of Detroit have enough to deal with without you piling on.

[devils chaplain]

6. This quote sums up my feelings...

"It seems like Detroit has just been left to die," says Marchand.

[me b zola]

7. Thank you so much for the article

Beyond the politico-socio-economics that the story really deals with, I have to say that I am deeply saddened at the loss of such great art-deco works of art that will be destroyed. Damn, just damn on so many levels.

[leftstreet]

9. K&R

[Lorien]

10. I don't understand why there have been no salvage operations by antique dealers

or others from more prosperous cities (NYC, LA, Chicago, etc). Deserted filled libraries, gorgeous intact Gothic revival churches...yet no one plucks what's salvageable from them? Are they in extremely violent areas? What gives?

[earth mom]

17. I'm wondering the same thing.I know for sure that the chandeliers & dentist office stuff are highly

sought after right now. :shrug:

[snagglepuss]

18. The fact that all this stuff was left to rot is what makes these images so

strange and compelling. Nothing makes sense.

[xchrom]

12. Recommend

[GeorgeGist]

14. Land of the Free, Home of the Brave.

Perhaps it's fair.

[salin]

16. I remember when those murders were ocurring...

If I recall most of the women were prostitutes, the bodies were found at very disparate sites and it took some time before it was realized and publicized that there was a serial killer stalking vulnerable women in Detroit.

To read how casually and carelessly the evidence from this case was treated years later - once again offends me on a deep level per the disregard those women experienced in life, in death and in memory.

Gut wrenching to read that.

[Faygo Kid]

19. Check out this link, and these photos: There is a lot more to Detroit than you think.

Born and raised there, and lucky to have done so: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x106318

[kgnu_fan]

21. kick

[Historic NY]

22. The decay of America its not just Detroit.

[david13]

25. I cannot blame the government. I can blame General Motors.

General Motors ran themselves into the ground. The government does not run GM, nor does Honda or Toyota.
GM is responsible for GM. And if the government wanted to help the workers, they should have given the money to the workers, not the corporation.
dc

[Historic NY]

31. Really, it wasn't GM it was an entire industry....

that brought the people to Detroit with the promise of jobs. It was new & fresh then sort of like our tech explosion ofthe 80's& 90's and then the bust time came. People tend to go where the jobs were and they were leaving in great numbers in some of these over industrial cities.....were experiencing it now in many other areas with the boarded up foreclosed homes. Where I lived they just bulldozed entire areas of the city, never gave it a thought that they lost the area of revitalization. It was called urban renewal back then, the renewal part never happened and people fled for the burbs.

[defendandprotect]

26. This is what the right wing produces -- destruction, decay, sick societies ---

GOP's "third world America" --

[EC]

28. So now the world sees what Bush had wrought on us..

I too cannot believe the lack of love of the old architecture and fixtures...but that has been happening for a long time...the beautiful old building being torn down to put up plastic icons of our plastic world...

[NashVegas]

30. "It is as if America has no sense of its own architectural history and culture."

That's because there are so many commercial interests who like it this way. VERY annoying, those historic preservation societies, that keep the wrecking ball away.