Marcus: I often post photos from bike rides around Detroit. Here is an excellent story of how some of these neighborhoods end up so devastated: industry buys up lots, neglects them, buys more for cheaper, then starts operating a concrete plant to poison the residents who don't want to or can't move away

I often post photos from bike rides around Detroit. Here is an excellent story of how some of these neighborhoods end up so devastated: industry buys up lots, neglects them, buys more for cheaper, then starts operating a concrete plant to poison the residents who don't want to or can't move away

Cadillac Heights concrete plant built illegally in Detroitwww.bridgedetroit.com It's the latest example of the city allowing special dispensations for heavy industry operations nestled in majority-Black neighborhoods.

This reminds me of a similar story out of Dallas, "Shingle Mountain". Washington Post covered it about 3 yrs ago. Was finally somewhat dealt with in 2021. www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

Shingle Mountain: How a pile of toxic waste was dumped in a community of colorwww.washingtonpost.com How White leaders in Dallas paved the way for toxic Shingle Mountain to rise up in a minority community

A tale as old as time in Detroit. I hate it.

One thing I really love about your photos is that it shows Detroit as it is, in a way that people who were making excursions to photograph Detroit in the late aughts never could. I feel like a lot of people started ignoring Detroit again when that trend passed.

(that whole thing felt like poverty tourism and kind of icky in a way I wasn't fully able to crystallize until I had spent time there)

Yeah I moved to Detroit kind of at the height of the ruin porn from Detroit thing. I wasn't really doing art or photography then, but I try to avoid recreating that

People have a strong reaction to images of urban ruins, and one way to approach that would be to amplify that reaction by decontextualizing and sensationalizing what the ruin looks like. At the very least, I always try to contextualize the images I make, because that's how I think art works

But ruin porn is also a pretty hardened discourse, & people react to some of my posts in line with that. So I do think about trying to present my stuff in ways that would hopefully encourage people to look out from them to more context. I think the "as it is" feeling is what I'm going for with that

I think early on it felt like it was good awareness raising. I remember good articles from around that time calling attention to important things, but it felt exploitative to me after a certain point.

Yes. The sensationalizing got to me. At the same time, my path not taken was moving to Detroit in 2009/10 because they really needed healthcare workers and they wanted to give us basically half a city block with a house and at the time I was up for rehabbing it/running an urban garden.

Oh yeah, that's right, there were a lot of weird little programs like that back then

Thank you, I really appreciate hearing that!

i just read this great piece, too. reads like the alternative ending of the Core City neighborhood if the permit for the concrete crusher was approved