I have not been out recently on a photo trek…and feel I am wandering in a liminal zone. For years trekking into Detroit for my style of images was like shooting fish in a barrel – butt somebody let the fish out. On the very first day, actually at 7 AM in the morning, I ventured off into Detroit for the first time in years. The month before I purchased my very first digital camera. It was a hunk of shit. But I needed something to post on a new photo/art sharing site that was just erupting online, Deviant Art. I was looking for something a bit different than a close-up shot down the strings of my guitar, and I wasn’t too enthusiastic about photographing my shoes even though, to quote street photographer Garry Winnogrand, “I photograph to see what the world looks like photographed” but I decided to pass on the shoes. Instead – I thought Detroit might be interesting, as the Motown is from whence I hail. With that creepy Kodak camera in tow, I headed into the city.
It was like the movie “The Wizard of Oz” when the black and white film suddenly transformed into brilliant color! Except – my experience was a reversal of that. I started out around Woodward and East Seven Mile Road and it was like a ghost town, a bombed out war zone. Busted windows, glass everywhere, breached abandoned buildings, tags painted on every available surface, a few burned out areas – my brain went numb. I tooled around a bit and felt like I really did not belong here, that I was violating someone’s, the city’s, privacy. I drove around a bit n main streets and things did not improve and as I headed out I decided I would not return and my second choice of ‘something to shoot’ would have to default to the cemetery. Besides, I had a feeling that if I shot in Detroit, she might shoot back.
I posted those images anyway because I had nothing else – and comments rolled in. People were shocked and even people from this area who travel Detroit’s main roads had not ‘scene’ the sorts of images I posted. So I went a second time, then a third time and before I knew it, I was addicted. I wanted to expose living conditions in Detroit. There was a lot of hanky panky going on down at city hall and the city was in crisis mode.
I spent the next fifteen plus years roaming Detroit’s worst neighborhoods. A new sheriff came to town around 2015 and things started to change. It was make-over. Clean-up. Abandoned homes and businesses were disappearing as in demolition. Yes – it was a demolition derby! Messed up business fronts were repaired and all abandoned buildings received a paint job of a dull, boring uniform color: Graffiti be gone. Yes, the downtown and midtown regions are like a new city and some of the neighborhoods were not included in the gentrification plans, at least not yet. I am sweet and sour. I have nothing to photograph! But I certainly want Detroit to survive and thrive. And besides – with the energy reversed and repair replaced despair – I have nothing to photograph, at least in Detroit.
I am still hungry and that’s where my new diet comes in. Target practice…I need a new focal point for my photography. Lurking in the background of my Detroit work, I am drawn to contemplative photography and the concept of the between – of liminal space areas – appeals.
So that is where I am at right now.
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