Thursday, January 19, 2012

Ruin porn: Dismantling Detroit

Hard to believe there is still more ruin porn waiting to be made. Hot on the heals of Julia Reyes Taubman's ruin porn/coffee table book, Detroit: 138 Square Miles comes Dismantling Detroit--a documentary from the makers of Jesus Camp! The film documents the work of "scrappers" who recycle the metal bits of old factories. From Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady's piece yesterday in the Times:
Detroit lost 25 percent of its population between 2000 and 2010, and now, broke, finds itself on the verge of a possible state takeover. Yet visual reminders of a better time both haunt and anoint the residents here. The past is achingly present in Detroit, and the way its citizens interact with the hulking, physical remnants of yesterday is striking.
Look, we all get it, Detroit has seen better days. I also believe it has seen worse days. I am tired of documentaries and article and books and photo essays that only focus on the negative things that are going on in Detroit. It seems like a lot of times they are made by people who come in from outside of the area to snap some pictures of sad abandoned buildings so they can go back home and tell all the world about how bad it is over there in Detroit. It is in accurate, irresponsible, and cheap to only portray the city as an abandoned wasteland. Anyway here's the video from the NYTimes. By far the best part is the Deathly Hallows tag at 0:15 seconds into it:

Hat tip: Michigan Daily

5 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. I teach school in SW Detroit and I too am tired of this "ruin porn" shit. Even the fact that the phrase "ruin porn" exists irritates me. The fact that people are getting off at watching this stuff makes me want to start ripping off heads and shitting down necks.
    (Sorry, in a pissy mood tonight).

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  3. This gorgeous book, due out soon, on Detroit's historic places, is the anti-ruin porn.

    Detroit's Historic Places of Worship

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  4. A while ago, I was down at Riverside taking a picture of ships (shocking I know) and I saw this guy with a camera down there. he was also taking pictures of ships...and from New York. He has a pretty decent blog too.

    As for ruin porn...I try to avoid to take pictures of crappy buildings in Detroit....too many others do it.

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  5. It's not the responsibility of every film maker to present a whole picture. Those guys are really there, really doing that, and to try to gloss over and make everything seem fine is just as disingenuous.

    We've never seen a fall as spectacular as Detroit, and though we're a lot closer to it and probably see more than our fair share of these kinds of videos, there's still a huge interest in what's going on there; good and bad.

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