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The Ruins Of Detroit
Until the 1960s, Detroit was one of America's most important cities, a hub of industry with a population of almost two million and a skyline to rival that of any U.S. city. Its buildings were monuments to its success and vitality in the first half of the twentieth century. At the start of the twenty-first century, those same monuments are now ruins: the United Artists Theater, the Whitney Building, the Farwell Building and the once ravishing Michigan Central Station (unused since 1988) today look as if a bomb had dropped on Motor City, leaving behind the ruins of a once great civilization. In a series of weekly photographic bulletins for Time magazine called "Detroit's Beautiful, Horrible Decline," photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre have been revealing to an astonished America the scale of decay in Detroit. "The state of ruin is essentially a temporary situation that happens at some point, the volatile result of change of era and the fall of empires," write Marchand and Meffre. "Photography appeared to us as a modest way to keep a little bit of this ephemeral state." As Detroit's white middle class continues to abandon the city center for its dispersed suburbs, and its downtown high-rises empty out, these astounding images, which convey both the imperious grandeur of the city's architecture and its genuinely shocking decline, preserve a moment that warns us all of the transience of great epochs.
227 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
September 12, 2012
Not really a book you "read" as it is a collection of masterful photographs of one of America's former "wonder cities" that is now without livelihood or direction, but an excess of ruins. The prose in the book though in the form of introductory paragraphs and captions is very interesting, and serves to provide the human "glue" behind the story these talented photographers are telling.
It is a sad book - to see places that were so much full of life, lives and hopes for at least a time, and to see the ruins of the grand ideas of those that toiled and made (or lost) their fortunes in this unforgiving city cannot help but make you shake your head.
It is oddly poignant in spots as well...such as a sequence around page 80 I beleve that shows the interior of a large 4,000 seat movie theater that was obviously grandly executed and decorated, and undoubtedly saw many a happy occasion. In the necessity of a declining city, it was brutally cut up inside and made into a three-level parking garage...the only parking garage that has the remnants of such grand paintings, gilt and frescoes on its vaulted ceilings being eaten away by the corrosive exhausts of vehicles. The real stab to the reader comes however, when the last caption casually mentions that the theater stands on the precise spot where Henry Ford built his first automobile. Truly a poignant and ironic 'full circle'.
It is a sad book - to see places that were so much full of life, lives and hopes for at least a time, and to see the ruins of the grand ideas of those that toiled and made (or lost) their fortunes in this unforgiving city cannot help but make you shake your head.
It is oddly poignant in spots as well...such as a sequence around page 80 I beleve that shows the interior of a large 4,000 seat movie theater that was obviously grandly executed and decorated, and undoubtedly saw many a happy occasion. In the necessity of a declining city, it was brutally cut up inside and made into a three-level parking garage...the only parking garage that has the remnants of such grand paintings, gilt and frescoes on its vaulted ceilings being eaten away by the corrosive exhausts of vehicles. The real stab to the reader comes however, when the last caption casually mentions that the theater stands on the precise spot where Henry Ford built his first automobile. Truly a poignant and ironic 'full circle'.
January 14, 2016
This was a very impressive and moving, if not exactly uplifting, photo essay on urban decay in Detroit. The photos -- interestingly, taken by two photographers using a single camera -- really capture the feeling I get when I stand in the cratered areas of the city I love. The most affecting by far were the shots of the abandoned Highland park police station, including photos of items left behind from the Highland Park Strangler investigation. But they cover everything you can think of in here -- schools, churches, theaters, apartment buildings, offices, single family houses, and of course auto plants. The photographers are French, and some of the text and captions were in need of a bit of "Englishing," but for the most part it's perfectly understandable and very well written.
November 7, 2011
Dust in the wind...Everything is dust in the wind....
I was fascinated by the large-format photos in this book, which features Detroit's former grandeur reduced to the debris of a dead era. Will we someday look at crumbling Wal-Marts and Home Depots in the same way?
I was fascinated by the large-format photos in this book, which features Detroit's former grandeur reduced to the debris of a dead era. Will we someday look at crumbling Wal-Marts and Home Depots in the same way?
January 22, 2018
“Could it be that plagiarism is merely the soft underbelly of covetousness?”
“Speramus meliora; resurgent cineribus.”
“We hope for better things; it shall arise from the ashes.”
“Speramus meliora; resurgent cineribus.”
“We hope for better things; it shall arise from the ashes.”
July 8, 2017
Haunting! Not so much a book as a photographic essay, a collection of photographs illustrating the downfall of a once great city. I would have liked a little more information about the history of the building photographed. This is what happens when a city's population collapsed from over 2 million to 900 thousand.
May 15, 2019
I have been on a personal quest to get to know the city of Detroit a little better through reading. While there isn't a lot of reading in this book, since it is a photography book, it still gave me yet another way to look at the city. I enjoyed looking at the photos of the buildings on the inside and imagining what the city was once like.
November 4, 2022
Grote pagina's met prachtige foto's van een vervallen stad. Je krijgt zin om Detroit te bezoeken. Het genre werd sindsdien vaak gekopieerd; weinig succesvol naar mijn mening.
January 4, 2023
Amazing pictures of the decaying history of Detroit. Makes me wish I was a millionaire that could go in and rescue architecture.
November 1, 2015
Photographers are too often suckered by the easy appeal of buildings in ruins into taking photographs that capture only the present, and unspectacularly at that. The photographs here steer well clear of that trap and fix themselves in a narrative continuum, prompting the observer to become almost unstuck in time, a la Billy Pilgrim, and consider, in addition to the depicted present, the uncertain future, the grand past, and the future as it must have been conceived in that past. There is an expansiveness to the structures and the city that suggests the limitless possibilities their builders tried to imagine, and the photographs in this book have a similar expansiveness. The Detroit on display is a city built by visionaries, documented by visionaries.
The photographs have broad and sweeping statements to make about many American systems and institutions--the education system, the financial sector, the industrial sector, artistic pursuits, the transportation industry, and commercial districts, all now in declines matching the physical ones captured here--and are often more interesting than the occasional accompanying text in making such statements (though it must be said that the text started on strong in the first third or so before starting to seem increasingly superfluous; it may be that the latter portions of text were created under demand for filler rather than out of any specific inspiration). But rather than simply relying on the city and its spaces to serve as symbols, this book goes beyond mere semiology and explores the tangible reality of the situation as well. The juxtapositions produced by careful and impeccable editing are mostly responsible for this sense of exploration; the images are sequenced to give a very real sense of zooming in or out on the city, a neighborhood, a block, a building, a room.
The pervading sense one comes away from this book is not one of melancholy. Although the feelings provoked are tinged with sadness, one comes away with a renewed sense of wonder and curiosity, having been exposed to numerous new revelations about a city whose condition can feel familiarly both in generally (the decline of the American city, industry, and perhaps spirit) and specifically (Detroit as a sample case), as well a sense of astonishment that anything ever existed, even briefly, and of intense hopefulness that it might happen again. As memorable as anything are the signs that life still exists in what might otherwise seem a post-cataclysmic wasteland--graffiti here, green growth there. One wishes a similar book could be produced for smaller cities, perhaps ones that peaked at a slightly less grandiose level and ones that have not yet declined so far, but it almost takes a city of such a scale as Detroit's to garner the notice of photographers, much less publishers.
(Particular highlights include the photographs on pages 37, 41, 45, 47, 93, 100, 109, 128, 131, 154, 165, 196, 200, 203, 205, and 219.)
The photographs have broad and sweeping statements to make about many American systems and institutions--the education system, the financial sector, the industrial sector, artistic pursuits, the transportation industry, and commercial districts, all now in declines matching the physical ones captured here--and are often more interesting than the occasional accompanying text in making such statements (though it must be said that the text started on strong in the first third or so before starting to seem increasingly superfluous; it may be that the latter portions of text were created under demand for filler rather than out of any specific inspiration). But rather than simply relying on the city and its spaces to serve as symbols, this book goes beyond mere semiology and explores the tangible reality of the situation as well. The juxtapositions produced by careful and impeccable editing are mostly responsible for this sense of exploration; the images are sequenced to give a very real sense of zooming in or out on the city, a neighborhood, a block, a building, a room.
The pervading sense one comes away from this book is not one of melancholy. Although the feelings provoked are tinged with sadness, one comes away with a renewed sense of wonder and curiosity, having been exposed to numerous new revelations about a city whose condition can feel familiarly both in generally (the decline of the American city, industry, and perhaps spirit) and specifically (Detroit as a sample case), as well a sense of astonishment that anything ever existed, even briefly, and of intense hopefulness that it might happen again. As memorable as anything are the signs that life still exists in what might otherwise seem a post-cataclysmic wasteland--graffiti here, green growth there. One wishes a similar book could be produced for smaller cities, perhaps ones that peaked at a slightly less grandiose level and ones that have not yet declined so far, but it almost takes a city of such a scale as Detroit's to garner the notice of photographers, much less publishers.
(Particular highlights include the photographs on pages 37, 41, 45, 47, 93, 100, 109, 128, 131, 154, 165, 196, 200, 203, 205, and 219.)
March 9, 2016
A very good book, mostly pictures, of the state of the city of Detroit as it falls into ruins.
Note that the book is selective; of course Detroit is not dead, but shrinking. The pictures are evocative of destruction and ruin as of a silent, small-scale war.
I downgraded it to 4 stars and not 5 because the text is small and light gray, as befits an "arty" book. I struggled mightily to view the text and finally gave up.
Note that the book is selective; of course Detroit is not dead, but shrinking. The pictures are evocative of destruction and ruin as of a silent, small-scale war.
I downgraded it to 4 stars and not 5 because the text is small and light gray, as befits an "arty" book. I struggled mightily to view the text and finally gave up.
December 18, 2013
A truly amazing look at Detroit--as someone who is in Detroit a lot, I was totally blown away to see some of the insides of the buildings I pass all the time. The photos are hauntingly beautiful and I find myself returning to the pictures over and over again and finding new details in them. Wholeheartedly recommend this book to everyone
January 16, 2014
It blows my mind how Detroit was the next New York City or Chicago in the roaring 20's only to fall into bankruptcy. Having been on house lined streets in the city where maybe one or two are still occupied while the others are boarded up, burned out, or crumbling to the ground surged my interest in learning about urban decay.
July 1, 2013
I loved this oversize book of hauntingly beautiful photographs. The text was insightful and gave historic background to the city and the photographs. It was an unbiased commentary. The photographers took dozens of amazing photographs-- each one a work of art.
May 26, 2015
'Today one wonders which disaster wiped away the elegance of the sumptuous hotel. Its permanent residents seem to have vanished in a nuclear catastrophe. Its gaunt figure imposes a disturbing and melancholic absence on the landscape of West Grand Boulevard.'
June 14, 2011
Well that was effing depressing.
February 11, 2012
The pictures are amazing. I kind of want to go to Detroit just to see the devistation.
June 16, 2012
The downfall of western civilization in stunnig photo's
December 8, 2012
Beautiful photographs along with informative, well-written text. The photos really tell the story, though.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews