ABANDONED HOMES. That is what you the reader expect when you hear and see images of Detroit, right? The media perhaps uses those former homes to metaphorically suggest the perception of Detroit being a shell of a city, empty, lost and unloved, or as some websites state a post-apocalyptic wasteland. A camera will snap images of neglected homes, buildings, schools and streets. So why would you think that Detroit wasn't like that?
At times the media seem hellbent on showcasing Detroit in a negative light - the newspapers you'll read will highlight endlessly blight and poverty. Photographers come and snap hundreds of images of abandoned burnt out buildings living up to the Ruin Porn craze. The media talks and photographs the Central Michigan Railway as if it is some tomb to abandonment that Detroit stands for. They snap, they write and then they leave. But their images and words recreate, continue and uphold the horrors and poverty that apparently dwells in Detroit - they write and post what people now assume Detroit to be. So why would readers like you assume Detroit to be any different when the media comes to the city and tells you what it's really like?
Google Detroit and or Ruin Porn you'll get images like this. [Click each image for original source]
Well some people do come to Detroit - those intent on experiencing this Ruin Porn craze - but what actually is it? Its those who come to the city merely to be voyeurs on "devastation tours", to document the presumed devastation within the urban vista - to visually stimulate the sense of destruction and withdrawal. Normally they target the aforementioned Central Michigan Railway Station alongside the Fisher and Packard Plants. Often the beauty of these places - the light steaming through semi broken windows for instance alongside their photographic skill actually turn these places into being beautiful which encourages more people to come and try it for themselves. An endless cycle. Moreover, through Ruin Porn Chayka states Detroit has become the visual symbol for us to "be reminded that it could all fail" but that it is perhaps beyond help. For them it's time to document Detroit before it falls completely.
Yes Detroit has abandoned fired out homes, yes it has lots of vacant plots and houses I'm not going to lie. But there is much more to the urban landscape those audiences outside are ever provided as evidence. Now here is were my interests enter - I love images and I love trying to analyse them and it's what I did for my Masters. When it comes to analyzing images what has always interested me is what is missing from the photographic frame. Because what is missing is just as important, if not more so then what is being featured within any given still.
Let us sit back for a second and reflect before we get in deep. Detroit hasn't always been documented negatively. In it's era it's been the Motor City and Motown - famed for it's car industry and music but the recession hit it hard, very hard. We all know what a certain Republican now trying to run for the White House said about "Let Detroit go Bankrupt" [Although he actually forgets saying that]. We've all see store prices in increasing and redundancies yet bankers and leaders keep their hands in pocketfuls of cash. Unfortunately Detroit became the visual metaphor for the global economic decline - Detroit lets people see what the recession has done. But to the point were they tend to forget that neglected poverty stricken parts effects many cities, American and non America alike.You don't want to imagine it happening in your own backyard, and you don't have to - that's what Detroit is for, right?
Time to think about the images;
The first image is what would normally be published within an article about Detroit - it's stereotypical in it's style. The home is abandoned, the wood is falling off the front, the overarching trees case it in shadow. It's forlorn, unkempt and mangled. It even appears to have suffered in a fire with no narrative we're left to wonder if the fire was accidental or arson.
Yet this second image comes to show what the photographers and or editors are cropping out of their images - this is what is missing. What is missing is the truth that beside this former burnt out home is a new construction perhaps by the same owner - it's new, it's clean, light and it looks welcoming. But that isn't what people expect to see so it never gets shown. It's all too easy to document what people assume, what they already perceive.
There is no real conclusion to this post. Only to state that it's too easy to merely take a photograph at face value. What's missing, what they don't want you to see is just, if not even more important then then what's being shown. Don't come to believe there is nothing in Detroit, that is all rack and ruins because its not. But if people keep believing the city to be that way - then it's never going to be able to be given the chance for a new state. A city shouldn't be allowed to fail and Ruin Porn can't be allowed to devastate Detroit even more.
You can read more about Ruin Porn and the references for this piece on these links; Motown or Ghost Town?, Ruin Lust (Guardian article about the history behind Ruin Porn), Civic Branding; Defining Detroit through the Media
I know this post might not necessarily appeal to my normal readers but I felt I needed to write this post for both myself and for Detroit. I did my MA in semiology [study of images] because I wanted to make a difference and it's something I love. I've been disheartened in my degrees lately because they have never seemed to get me anywhere and I can never seem to find that job that's out there for me. I wanted to prove to myself I still had it in me. So if you read this to the very end, thank you.