NON-FICTION
DETROIT
I
have always heard rumors of this city, and how danger lurks in every corner. People from the United States tend to talk about Detroit in hushed tones, like the city is an estranged family member they are ashamed of. As a photographer, the brokenness of Detroit had always intrigued me. I longed to be one of the many photographers with a repertoire of black and white, dramatic photos in forgotten buildings. I kept thinking of the city as a photographic opportunity, but the stories behind the photographs had never captured my heart.
I jumped at the opportunity to go to Detroit and take photos of the city with a friend of mine.
We headed down 8 Mile, looking for places to turn off and explore a little bit more. We eventually headed into a neighborhood where abandoned houses lined the cracked pavement road.
I was excited for the day; excited for the photographs and stories I could add to my portfolio. We climbed into the first house, which look like it was the victim of a small fire bomb. I was snapping photos, but they weren’ t pictures that told much of a story except of dramatic lighting, and dark shadows. My heart still wasn’ t there yet. My friend had thought about taking a book, but when he saw that the book had mail in it, that showed the name and address of the person who had lived there, he stopped. He saw the story of desperation and brokenness far before I caught on.
The next place we went to was a school that had closed the year before, called Mason Elementary. The neighborhood had such an eerie feel to it, as if we were walking through a minefield. We were surrounded by foreclosed homes and there was a stillness in the air despite being in a residential neighborhood. The school was fenced in, with barbed wire guarding the top of the fence. I know that it was put there for the safety of the children, yet it seemed so harsh for a school.
We shimmied through a window and walked around the classrooms. Everything was stripped bare, but we could tell that this school was a favorite tramping ground for mischief.
When we went down to the playground we were joined by three boys who came to use the swing set. One of the boys was eager to show off his back flipping abilities, and was flipping through the grass as long as we’ d give him praise. We talked to them about the school, that all of them use to attend. Now they each commute to different schools outside of their neighborhood, but they come back here to play.
Over the afternoon we went into several other places. But it was the cathedral that finally caught my heart. Honestly,