Mark Alor Powell takes the cake for showing actual, breathing people living their lives, and not just ruined buildings like we so often see. Beautiful exhibit, beautiful body of work. Looking at the photos as a whole, though, you do get some of the synthesis you were talking about... unfortunately most of those photos on their own, while beautiful, do reinforce the narrative you were pointing out.
-Art 2009/8/2 kent williams <chaircrus...@gmail.com>: > This was tagged on Boing Boing, and I thought it was pretty lovely. > > http://www.mitchcope.com/projects/detroit-book-of-love/ > > It brings up something I find interesting: Detroit is obviously a > city with unprecedented problems, that these photos illustrate > eloquently. But they also reiinforce a narrative of Detroit as a > post-prosperity wasteland. It feels like there's a conceptual Detroit > being created, a sort of "Life After Man" wasteland with crack heads > and copper scavengers scuttling among the ruins. This is by no means > the whole story -- real people live in Detroit, and despite the > challenges they face, many manage to live productive, even happy > lives. They also have an active and evolving civic and artistic > culture. > > How could these two stories of Detroit be synthesized?
