It has been a while since we’ve indulged in our obsession with photography of abandoned places, but thanks to The Ruins of Detroit, a book by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, we’ve given in. “It seems like Detroit has just been left to die,” Marchand recently explained to The Guardian. “Many times we would enter huge art deco buildings with once-beautiful chandeliers, ornate columns and extraordinary frescoes, and everything was crumbling and covered in dust, and the sense that you had entered a lost world was almost overwhelming. In a very real way, Detroit is a lost world — or at least a lost city where the magnificence of its past is everywhere evident.” Click through to preview some of our favorite photographs featured in the book.
Michigan Central Station. Photo credit: Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre Photography
Comments (26)
These are very humbling images. Great craftsmanship left in ruin. If the object is no longer economically productive it is worthless. Culture and aesthetics are shoved aside. The replacements are usually embarrassing examples of mediocre modern architecture.
I have been following the photos of this man on flickr for a few years. I highly recommend him for pictures of beautiful decay in Detroit.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tedguy49/page1/
These images are interesting, but there are much better photographs of the same subject: see Andrew Moore, represented by Yancey Richardson. These are straightforward documentary images, his are beautiful artworks. One wonders why Flavorwire goes with the less good work…
The old train station looks like a piece of art from old Europe! It’s a doggone shame!
Many of these structures are HUGE. These photos make Detroit look like post-WWII Stalingrad or Berlin. I had a very brief look at the city once while passing through on my way to Windsor and while it was obviously an economically depressed region, I saw nothing like the images here. It almost defies belief.
Beautiful… looks like some great shots for some horror zombie dystopia or post-apocalyptic movie.
oh, wow, destruction porn from detroit recalling (?!?) a pre-apocalyptic overly romantic view of destruction. added bonus, French photographers.
3 trends that need to bite the dust.
1. destruction porn from detroit
2. french photographers/artists/etc obsessed with america
3. the pseudo post-apocalyptic pre-apocalyptic trend
trite. trite. trite.
i would be entirely unsurprised if their next project was Chernobyl.
You nailed it, Reel Aesthete. Right there with Katrina tours.
Chernobyl is booking tourists, yep…tourists…doz the bad areas, sell them for a dollar each and rebuild.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by joanne reidy and Edward Lund. Edward Lund said: RT @flavorpill Ruins of Detroit http://is.gd/k2ftn – truly haunting.. and yet LOADED with potential. Can someone make this an artist comune? [...]
[...] Photo Gallery: The Ruins of Detroit » [...]
Here is a series by Kristine Diven of nude self portraits taken in many of these same buldings.
http://studiox.viewbook.com/portfolio/nude_self_portrait_collection
You said it, reel aesthete. I’d rather see these buildings fully functioning, with thousands of people that have actual jobs. But I guess that’s not of much interest to practicioners of destruction porn.
they should be knocked down and made into parks and public open space…
and, for follow-up, a good article on detroit and those sorts of images. know your visual landscape, kids.
http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2009/09/25/06
I want the books in that library … .
Beautiful imagery… But I understand the other POV, from people who live there and are thriving. This is a very interesting 30 minute documentary, released in September, about Detroit and new developments: http://www.palladiumboots.com/explorations/
[...] this week we explored the ruins of Detroit. Wastelands, a series by UK-based photographer Dan Dubowitz, looks at similar abandoned spaces in [...]
Many of the great empires of history, antiquity were blown over & covered by the sands of time. No empire, much less democracy, ever survived militarism.
[...] week, when we published a photo series from Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre on the ruins of Detroit, an offended Flavorwire commenter asked what was next for the duo: a project on Chernobyl? [...]
[...] went around capturing awesome pictures in the mostly abandoned grand buildings in detroit. check it out here courtesy of flavorwire. Spread the [...]
[...] Flavorwire ran an item on a new book of photographs by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre titled “The Ruins of Detroit.” Marchand and Meffre are French photographers who worked in the city over the last year or so as [...]
[...] previously explored the ruins of Detroit in this space, and while we found the devastation captured in Yves Marchand and Romain [...]
[...] Belt cities like Detroit, whose population declined by 25 percent between 2000 and 2010. Although other photographers have explored the rubble of its public spaces, Kevin Bauman has been working since the ’90s [...]
[...] Flavorwire В» Photo Gallery: The Ruins of Detroit Jan 3, 2011 … These photos make Detroit look like post-WWII Stalingrad or Berlin. I had a very brief look at the … [...]
[...] 2005, photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre (whose photographs of Detroit in ruins captivated us last year) began documenting theaters that had either fallen into decay or been [...]
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