Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, abandoned UA theater in Detroit
Last July, the once powerful city of Detroit became the largest American municipality to file for bankruptcy. Yesterday, a federal judge ruled that public pensions are not protected, and the city can now proceed with the bankruptcy process. Detroit has been on the decline for decades, falling from a population of 1.8 million in the 1950s to under 700,000 today. The crime rate is five times higher than the national average and police response time is more than 58 min (the national average is 11 min). The city has nearly 78,000 abandoned structures, many of which have been photographed by many photographers, as part of a photographic trend in urban exploration. Look through one photo essay by two French photographers, Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, who photograph the “beautiful, horrible decline” of Detroit. What do you think of these photos? What do you think of the idea of beautiful decay?
Marchand’s and Meffre’s photos for Time Magazine
More photos of Detroit from Marchand’s and Meffre’s website
The DUE DATE to submit your blog posts for this topic is Sunday, December 15th.
If the public pension was protected there would not be so much leaving Detroit. There will be less crime and an improvement in the public. People who retire will find it hard to survive there because they will not be able to survive on the salary of the pension. Detroit has a lot of Huge building that are decaying because they are not maintained with all the people leaving. The building that were photographed would have been a great view to have in Detroit, but people are leaving because they will not have finical security after they are retired
It’s weird to see something so “ugly” and think of it as art. All of those photographs shows areas of slums but yet they way the photographed them makes you want to keep looking . Not only does. It make you keep looking it makes you want to help fix it . The photo the jumped out to me was the dentist office with all the chipped paint . When you think of dentist office you don’t think of them being dirty so that made me realize why and what they were trying to get viewer to understand .
It’s crazy that photos showing so much destruction can be appealing to the eye giving a different kind of beauty. Even though buildings, schools, and auditoriums are torn down you can see past it to see what stood before. You can see from the architecture that life in Detroit before the economic disaster was beautiful. I think the idea of beautiful decay is great in many aspects for one it creates a chance for people to see beauty in everything and also educates the viewer. After seeing the photos of Detroit I imagined iconic buildings of New York being in the same condition but still standing showing out personality as strong New Yorkers I think the photos did that for Detroit.
Even though the photos are subjects of ruins, I still consider them art. My reason for that is because they all have structure. Whether a building is standing tall or crumbled to the ground there is a form of style and shape still existing, as well as color. Debris is a color. Burnt wood is also a color and ends in a form of shape also. If Those same images can be framed and put in a museum they will be considered art. The images are very eye catching as well because they is so much damage to the buildings, you want to concentrate on what is destroyed.
Detroit can be the best city in the nation, but what makes the city is the people. If all the people come together and do something about the decline in Detroit it can be better. Fix up the city to make it more appealing to attract more people to go there. Instead of just letting these places look bad get up and go fix it up. To decrease the crime there should be neighborhood watches in the city and there should be petitions against the police to respond faster to phone calls. Detroit can make a huge turn around it all just depends on the people of it to make it better.
Detroit can be the best city in the nation, but what makes the city is the people. If all the people come together and do something about the decline in Detroit it can be better. Fix up the city to make it more appealing to attract more people to go there. Instead of just letting these places look bad get up and go fix it up. To decrease the crime there should be neighborhood watches in the city and there should be petitions against the police to respond faster to phone calls. Detroit can make a huge turn around it all just depends on the people of it to make it better.
Looking through these photos it seems like an aftermath of a nuclear bomb. Where it’s just abounded for radioactivity but this is different and it’s just amazes me how these buildings still stand but abandoned for the reason I just not fixing up the place. I mean maybe these are just like Detroit’s way of keeping history alive by not touching these buildings keeping them alive so the public could see. I believe that is there way to show a beautiful decay and just paint a picture at the viewers mind I what life in Detroit was like with no worries back then, than today where there are many issues. Maybe one day it will make the community open their eyes and do something about it.