Rust Belt Gansky

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1/21Photography & Culture Volume 7 Issue 2 July 2014, pp. 119140

Photography &Culture

Volume 7Issue 2July 2014pp. 119140

DOI:10.2752/175145214X13999922103084

Reprints available directly from

the publishers

Photocopying permitted by

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Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

2014

Ruin Porn andthe Ambivalence of

Decline: AndrewMoores Photographsof Detroit

Andrew Emil Gansky

AbstractAndrew Moores contemporary photographs of Detroit, MI,

are a significant engagement with urban ruins. The images

have been developed and displayed in the context of significant

national economic and cultural upheavals. The considerable

public response to the images at art museums and galleries and

in mainstream media publications attests to the photographs

particular resonance among middle-class viewers, who have used

the images to articulate interrelated fears about the postindustrial

economy, environmental degradation, and poor governance,as well as a growing malaise with respect to the history and

prospects of the middle class within US culture. However, some

critics have called photographic representation into question

as an adequate means for mainstream viewers to reframe their

relationships with contemporary urbanity and the attitudes

and practices that have contributed to the substantial problems

facing urban areas across the country. Moores sharpest critics

have termed his photographs ruin porn, and have accused

his viewers of failing to do anything more than gaze at Detroitfrom a safe distance. This article frames Moores photographs

and the discourse around them in their immediate cultural

and historical contexts as well as within broader photographic

movements and the iconography of ruins. These analyses

inform close readings of key images to explore the possibilities

of artistic work that helps Detroit appear both as a specific,

localized instance of broader cultural tendencies and as an

imaginative, speculative terrain for reimagining the practices

and attitudes of governments, markets, and social groups.

Keywords: Detroit, urban ruins, Andrew Moore,

photography, ruin porn


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Andrew Emil Gansky Ruin Porn and the Ambivalence of Decline 121

Photography & Culture Volume 7 Issue 2 July 2014, pp. 119140

international photographers such as Thomas

Struth, Edward Burtynsky, Robert Polidori, andSze Tsung Leong, but since he sees his art in a

tradition [that] spans less than forty years, he

suggests that he has been equally influenced by

visual traditions outside photography (Moore

2011a). Certainly, Moores engagement with the

idiosyncrasies and ironies of built landscapes,

especially those that are decayed, abandoned,

and defunct, aligns his work with some of the

aforementioned photographers focus on the

consequences of industrialization, urbanization,

and other human interventions in the landscape.1

The character of Detroit Disassembled as

a series is very much an extension of Moores

widely exhibited and critically acclaimed previous

work; a survey of his photography reveals

an artist deeply engaged with human places

uniquely marked, transformed, or ravaged

by history, including Cuba, Russia, Vietnam,

and Bosnia; defunct military installations onGovernors Island, New York; and a rapidly

industrializing China.2Moore is perhaps best

understood as a photographer who develops

portraits of places at particular moments in time,

bringing into focus especially those spaces and

situations that bespeak layers of history, rife with

contrasts between original intentions and uses,

subsequent economic or militant devastation,

and the adaptations or abandonments of humanoccupants. Although Moores approach to

Detroit, and indeed, the subject matter he finds

there, reflects the techniques and interests he has

developed photographing other environments,

none of his other work has drawn notable

controversy. Moores consistent aesthetic suggests

that style alone has not driven negative responses

to his work, a critical backlash that is inflected by

the longer history of representations of Detroit.Ruin porn is a key turn of phrase that

has animated recent public discussions of

photography in Detroit, especially high-profile

series such as Detroit Disassembled. The

provocative label came to prominence with

Thomas Mortons (2009) contribution to Vice

magazine, Something, Something, Something,Detroit: Lazy Journalists Love Pictures of

Abandoned Stuff, wherein he skewered a

plague of photographers and journalists

whom he argued dont want anything to do

with the city except to exploit its condition for

personal gain. Although Mortons sensationalistic

article aimed to agitate readers, it played off

of longstanding tensions between different

stakeholders in the city, touching off vehement

disputes about perceived class and racial divides

between those who produce and consume

images of Detroits ruins, and those who live

among the citys scarred icons. Simultaneously,

other viewersand many mainstream

publicationshave seen the photographs as

timely and eloquent statements on Detroits

relevance to a host of pressing national problems.

Indeed, in the face of recent ruins following

from acts of terrorism, war, governmentalmissteps, and corporate malfeasance, Andrew

Moores photographs appear to have been

particularly resonant and able to index a range

of concerns, from fears about the state and

direction of the US economy, environmental

degradation, fraying social safety nets, and urban

decline. As part of a larger reemergence of

ruins as potent cultural forms to question and

contest state and market actions and theiroften troubling consequences for various

populations, Moores images have spoken

beyond Detroits local context, extending the

reach of conversations about human-made

landscapes of decay, decline, and disaster.

In an effort to elucidate the character

and consequences of the debate over the

convergence of art, aesthetics, ruins, and urban

politics, this article develops several veins ofinquiry into Andrew Moores photographs

and responses to them. I approach the

photographs through Detroits particular history

of deindustrialization and abandonment, the

contemporary national uncertainties to which


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journalism, the ruination of large cities seemed

to exemplify the degeneracy of urbanity and tovindicate the abandonment of urban centers.

Perhaps ironically, Moores photographs

arguably appeal most to the present-day

iterations of the middle-class audiences who

once expressed disgust for the impoverishment

and decline of urbanity: mainstream media and

institutions have almost exclusively mediated

responses to Detroit Disassembled, especially

art museums, publications such as TheNew York

Times, TheWall Street Journal, The New Yorker,

Time magazine, The New Republic, andArt in

America, as well as personal blogs and special-

interest web magazines. Taped interviews with

museum visitors at the Akron Art Museum

and the Queens Museum likewise suggest that

Moores work has struck particular chords with a

middle-class viewership, a trend that corresponds

with George Steinmetzs observation that

interest in Detroits ruins is a primarily white,middle-class fascination, attributable to a

nostalgia for Fordism, a desire to relive the past,

to reexperience the prosperous metropolis

as it is remembered or has been described

(Steinmetz 2010: 298). Although close attention

to viewers responses reveals more complicated

and conflicted constellations of affect than simple

nostalgia for an idealized history, critics of Moores

work contend that even if middle-class viewersno longer see Detroit as so alien or othered

from their experiences, Moores photography

maintains a troubling distance between viewers

and the city, doing little to qualitatively recast

the mediated relationships described by

Berman and Herron. The most unfavorable

appraisals of Detroit Disassembled argue

that Moore has transformed the citys troubling

history into gratuitously aesthetic displays thatcontinue to encourage reactionary responses.

However, the aesthetic uncertainties of ruins

imagery accommodate imaginative possibilities.

Eduardo Cadava evokes the ruin of the images

capacity to show, to represent, to address and

evoke the persons, events, things, truths, histories,

lives and deaths to which it would refer, even asit struggles to bear the traces of what it cannot

show, to go on, in the face of this loss and ruin,

to suggest and gesture toward its potential for

speaking (Cadava 2001: 36). Although Moores

photographs may prove more engaging in the

short term to far-flung observers than local

residents, they bear witness to past struggles

that today even some Detroiters would rather

forgetthe images hold up ruins as ambiguous

antidotes to more recent paeans to Detroits

as yet unrealized regeneration. Detroit

Disassembled has disturbed and arrested

attention, encouraging critical engagements with

the cultural practices that lead to ruination. This is

in marked contrast to much Detroit boosterism,

which often frames ruin as a necessary precursor

to renewal and draws on the triumphal figure of

the urban pioneer, who reclaims the city from

the derelict wilderness of social dissolutionand abandonment (Park 2005: 7, 3031).

The critical resistance to narratives of

Detroit as a wilderness, and its regeneration at

the hands of intrepid outsiders, speaks to many

of the key tensions in the citys history. The

dominant narrative of Detroits decline blames

rapid suburban expansion driven by the auto

industrys rapacious growth post-World War II, a

movement that abandoned vast yet outmodedfactories in Detroits urban core for even

more massive industrial complexes beyond the

boundaries of the city proper. Thomas Sugrue

has painstakingly illustrated the complex of

homeowners association bylaws, local agitation

against affordable public housing, and racist

ideologies that effectively locked black workers

out of the suburban migration of jobs and social

services, meaning deindustrialization weighedmost heavily on the job opportunities of young

African American men and the social fabrics of

African-American communities (Sugrue 1996:

147). However, work was not merely leaving

Detroit for surrounding communitiesit was


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imaginings, often invoking lamentations for the

conspicuous human capacity to ravage naturallandscapes and human works with war, industry,

and recently, economic restructurings. Barbara

Maria Stafford compellingly describes unsettled

attractions to ruined structures, which do not

possess a preestablished formal and rational

connotation and therefore undergird theor[ies]

that all contemporary phenomena are broken

wholes (Stafford 2000: 74). Ruins thus challenge

the ability to stabilize meanings or satisfactorily

explain the causes of destruction, opening a

rift with respect to meaning that corresponds

to the melancholics feeling of discontinuity

with regard to reality (Makarius 2004: 194).

Although Blackmar identifies a preponderance of

contemporary ar tworks that focus on the ruins

of modernism, documenting the decay of what

was the twentieth centurys commanding vision

of the future (Blackmar 2001: 325), more recent

trends have deepened ambivalent attitudes tosome of the structures now in ruins, recognizing,

for example, that abandoned industrial works

such as car factories or defunct military

installations once engaged in the ambiguous

business of producing dangerous waste products

and instruments of violence alongside material

wealth. In Germany, the reinterpretation of

abandoned factories as industrial wasteland is

particularly pronounced, and is being counteredby a concerted transformation of old industrial

sites into the contrived natural environments

of parks, lakes, and gardens (Barndt 2010: 271).

Detroit is experiencing a similar sublimation of

deserted industries, although the encroachments

of plant and animal life are transpiring with far

less official support, bespeaking a more conflicted

attitude to these once-symbols of US power.

Moore began photographing Detroit in2008, the same year Wall Street (and the

national economies it drove) teetered on the

verge of collapse as the subprime mortgage

and foreclosure crisis escalated. Although

Moore produced some vast scenes of urban

ruin, he also made many fine-grained views of

abandonment and decay, pointedly keying in onminute details to suggest the interconnectedness

between Detroit and broader cultural contexts.

One photo, National Time Clock, Former Cass

Technical High School Building(Figure 1), brings

together a recognition of Detroits relevance to

a national viewing audience with a strong sense

of the aesthetics of ruins. On the clocks face,

a distended number twelve oozes toward an

unreadable morass of digits. The molten beige

upon which the numbers are printed drapes

over the minute and hour hands, its downward

slide arrested. The plastic face has lifted in places,

exposing a blued metal circle that contrasts

subtly with the walls charred black enamel.

Just to right of the clock, the crackled paint has

separated into layers, peeling off to reveal a patch

of unsullied turquoise, a splotch of immaculate

color that vies constantly for the eyes attention.

The time at which the clock stopped can beguessed, just a little past 3.50. A small line of

text remains legible between the numeral six

and the center of the clock: NATIONALTIME. A

scorched wall, a disfigured clock, and enigmatic

wordsa microscopic view that distills a city

even as it gestures toward a national field of

relations. To understand the uncertain allegory

in the photo requires a somewhat poetic sense

of play between the text and the imageryto ask whether the onward flow of national

time (an implicitly progressive notion) has

abandoned Detroit, or whether Detroit indicates

an interrupted national progress narrative.

The clock is a mass-produced object, certainly.

It symbolizes the national time of standardized

products, and as a functional tool was once

synchronized with the official time of the school,

established on the basis of a national time zone.Clearly, time itself has not stopped in Detroit,

only this timepiece, yet clock time is meaningless

in a school where bells no longer ring and fires

burn in vacant classrooms. Such a place is out

of sync, or in the words of Jrg Colberg (2009),


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126 Ruin Porn and the Ambivalence of Decline Andrew Emil Gansky


Fig 1 National Time Clock, Former Cass Technical High School Building( Andrew Moore, 2010).


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surreal: upon viewing the photograph of the

clock, he muses, Maybe this is all just a dream,and a country like the US would not literally have

one of its largest cities resemble a modern-day

Pompeii. For Colberg, the relationship to ruin

is one of disbelief. The mangled clock suggests

the need for the nation to reestablish its time, to

bring Detroit back into the fold of its standardized

reality. But the terms on which the nation and

Detroit can reconnect are murky. It is possible

that national time, as emblematized by a flimsy,

plastic, mass-produced, ubiquitous clock, is itself

a kind of sickness, and its failure is, in the words

of one viewer, an object lesson in industrial

capitalism, the ramifications of globalization,

inhumanity and shortsightedness, and an urgent

call to action to rethink consumerism (St.-

Lascaux 2011). In other words, the national

time of which Detroit once partook, and

indeed helped produce in its vast factories of

consumable objects, isthe root problem, not thesolution: national time created the conditions

for its own destruction. Casss failure does not

simply evoke nostalgia for the institutions of

Detroits formerly affluent working and middle

classes, but raises questions about the economic

practices and racial attitudes that undergirded and

undermined such institutions. Despite the schools

lack of significance to the national production

of working subjects, the photo can serve as aspace to renegotiate the factors that contributed

to schools demise, and to suggest alternate

futures defined in relation to Detroits distinct

contradiction of national progress narratives.

National Time Clockbears out many of the

distressing features of ruination as well as ruins

capacity to incite pointed cultural criticism,

but there is an excess to this photograph, a

sumptuous revelation of texture and color thatexceeds the communication of a simple narrative

about the meaningfulness of Detroits ruins to the

nation. The curators of Detroit Disassembled

at the Akron Art Museum key in on this fact,

asserting that: From destruction and decay,

[Moore] has wrought images of great visual

beauty, a comment that hints at the complicatedrole aesthetics play in Moores particular vision

of the city (Tannenbaum and Kahan 2010: 123).

Max Kozloff (2011) similarly discovers arresting

tensions between the alluring photos and their

disturbing content: the troubling ruins repel

the sense of touch even as outrageous

colors entice the eye, imparting an overall

impression of voluptuous disenchantment

in places where erstwhile belief systems ran

out of time. Kozloff s language, which hovers

between mesmerization and erudite cynicism,

suggests the critical, if abstract, edge that Moores

imagery gains from an attention to the colors

and aesthetic forms made available in ruins. A

review of Detroit Disassembled for TheWall

Street Journalelaborates these interpretive

possibilities: Everybody knows what went wrong

with Detroit because everybody sees in the city

problems that trouble the rest of the country.Detroit serves as a metaphor for broader societal

problemsit seems to register the ravages of

civic decay like an urban Portrait of Dorian Gray

(Photo-Op 2012). A metaphorical connection

may well be uncertain, but TheWall Street Journals

description evocatively asserts that a failure to

address what is happening in Detroit bespeaks

a national inability to mitigate civic decay.

As things stand, the possibilities for dialoguebetween Detroit and the nation are not easy

or straightforward, not least because the city

no longer participates fully in contemporary

economic culture, and cannot exert the influence

its leaders enjoyed at the height of industrialism.

Furthermore, the disturbing appearance of

ransacked schools and other institutions makes

Detroit a doubtful model for a desirable national

future. If the city embodies cultural errors,Moores photographs do not clearly map the

path to redemption. Moore described to me

the profound challenges of even photographing

schools like Cass, which he found especially

emotionally troubling because they had been


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violently degraded, trashed without thought,

violated with anger and abandon; Mooreasserts that he had great trouble keeping [his]

composure and balance during extended

engagements with such locations (Moore

2011b). Of the Detroiters Moore spoke with, he

likewise insists, To a person they all hated the

abandoned buildings For them this was like a

spreading cancer, and they wanted to see it cut

out, to have all of it torn down and hauled away

as quickly as possible (Moore 2011a). Yet he

concludes, Im not sure if I really can understand

the despair [Detroiters] must confront every day,

living face to face with these destroyed icons

of learning and community (Moore 2011b).

These visceral reactions to the forsaken places

of the city point to the fact that more is at

stake than metaphors and ideologiesthe citys

desertion and dissolution has had a profound

emotional fallout that residents do not find

easier to endure with the passage of time.The question remains whether there is

too great a gap between Moores meditative

photographs, which were made for the

contemplative spaces of galleries and museums,

and the everyday experience of ruin, when, in

Moores own encounters, very few residents

of Detroit saw any beauty whatsoever in [its]

scarred places (Moore 2011a). Photographs

like National Time Clocksuggest that Moore isdeeply attentive to the metaphoric capacity

of ruins as cultural forms, and his images strive

to arrest and interrogate ruins as something

more than the material effect of oppressive

economic forces and social practices. Even so,

Moores own comments suggest that Detroits

novel appearance is imaginative fodder chiefly

for those who live outside the city, appealing

specifically to the middle classes that onceabandoned or rejected cities like Detroit and are

now attempting to reinterpret the connections

between those cities and their own experiences.

The next section situates Moore within

other photographic and aesthetic movements

and varying media approaches to Detroit to

better understand the criticisms mounted againsthis work and to more clearly account for how

other viewers are using Detroit Disassembled

to establish the citys relevance to a variety of

critical cultural problems. On the one hand,

the discourse around Moores work does

seem to engage Detroit imaginatively rather

than tangibly, yet the desire to police Detroits

representations too closely could unduly suppress

valuable lines of inquiry into the citys struggles.

The Alluring Wastes of History:Interpreting Moores PhotographicStyleMoores visual approaches to Detroits urban

landscape can be positioned in a trajectory

that encompasses amateur and professional

photographic work in the city. Nate Millington

assiduously points out that Detroit residents,

especially Lowell Boileau, the long-term producerof the Fabulous Ruins of Detroit photo website,

are important historical precedents for Detroit

Disassembled, but identifies an unmatched

contemporary explosion of Detroit ruins

photography, which is largely driven by outsiders

(Millington 2013: 279). Millingtons analysis

suggests that the sheer quantity of photographic

treatments of Detroit, much of it variable in

quality and intention, has lent a negative edge tothe reception of almost all photographs depicting

the citys ruins. Indeed, the photographers working

in Detroits ruins are almost too numerous to

count, but few of the most recent image-makers

have photographed Detroit as extensively,

exhibited as widely, or received as much attention

as Moore, with the possible exception of

Romain Meffre and Yves Marchand, two French

photographers who initially invited Moore toDetroit and produced their own photographic

series, The Ruins of Detroit (2011).4

Moore personally defines his work somewhat

in opposition to other notable photographers

of the city, especially Camilo Jos Vergara, a


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well-known documentarian of urban ruins. In the

mid-1990s, Vergara began photographing the city(along with ruins elsewhere in the United States)

and scandalized Detroit when he proposed to

transform twelve downtown blocks into a ruins

preserve (Bennet 1995). Vergara is best known

for returning to the same sites year after year to

create detailed portraits of urban change.5Moore

says he appreciate[s] the intense commitment

required by Vergaras sociological approach but

finds his actual picture-making far less interesting,

as his works are rooted in street photography

and photojournalism and lack formal organization

apart from their systematic methodology (Moore

2011a). By contrast, Moores profound attention

to space and form draws on his experiences

as the son of an architect who often took

Moore to sites under construction. As Moore

relates these experiences to his photography,

I became used to imagining spaces andtheir functions without much in the way of

tangible evidence The way I perceived

structures wasnt that they contained, or

constrained space, but rather that that they

animated and brought those spaces to life.

Indeed one of the very first things I consider

when making a photograph is how alive

the space is, how articulated it is, and how

I can define, mold and frame that space

within the picture plane. (Moore 2011a)

Moores eye therefore displays a canny sense of

how to work with spaces as social phenomena,

finding the moments and angles that capture the

physical traces of human actions, if not people

themselves. His photographs find their r ichest

ground by amassing such human evidence in

the frame, but leaving much uncertain about

the processes of accumulationthere is rarelya clear sense of cause and effect in his images.

The photographs themselves are painstaking

to make. The photographic plates of Moores

view cameras require extended exposures,

sometimes thirty seconds or more, especially

in the dimly illuminated interiors of abandoned

structures. Their large size and slow exposurespeeds require Moore, and sometimes an

assistant, to set up each shot on a tripod and

to thoroughly account for the photographed

space to discern factors that will affect the final

plate. Unlike some photojournalists or snap

shooters, who move quickly within moments to

arrest briefly constituted and rapidly evolving

scenes, Moore produces extended gazes into

complicated spaces. Just as Moore must dig into

locations to craft the best possible photograph,

his images give the eye much to dig into,

especially in museum or gallery contexts, where

the largest prints are up to 62 78 in. As one

viewer comments, You feel you can almost step

into the highly detailed prints (Fiorelli 2011).

In addition to these formal particularities,

Moore distinguishes his work from some

contemporary photography in terms of the

importance of color to his compositions, in whichhe follow[s] in the tradition of American realis[t]

painters, including Frederic Church, [Thomas]

Eakins , Charles Sheeler, [Edward] Hopper and

even [Andrew] Wyeth and Norman Rockwell,

with the belief that color is essential to the

emotional thrust of the narrative; Moore strives

in his photography to construct a palette that

provides an emotional key to the image (Moore

2011a). By contrast, in much contemporarylarge-format photography, Moore sees color as

essentially an afterthought, with little emotional

value (Moore 2011a). In delineating his influences,

Moore significantly defines his work in contrast to

documentary conventions in photography, instead

pointing to artistic traditions where meticulous

formal composition and careful deployment of

vivid colors exist in tension with realist techniques

to suggest allegories and narrative flows.The very fact that Moores photographs

aspire to a particular aesthetic beyond simply

documenting the citys condition has served as

the primary ammunition in criticisms of Detroit

Disassembled. For example, Millington claims


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that photographers including Moore have

construct[ed] an imaginative geography ofthe city that is focused on emptiness, ruin and

picturesque decay, a move he views with deep

ambiguity, as commentators both mourn the citys

current state while celebrating its picturesque

aesthetic (Millington 2013: 282). He expresses

the particular fear that such photographs tend to

naturalize the social processes responsible for

Detroits decline by elevating the eerily appealing

aesthetic of verdant plant life, lustrous mold, and

weather-borne sediments overtaking abandoned

structures (280). Millingtons guarded critique

aligns with Herrons assertion that Detroit is

not just a physical location; it is also a project,

a projection of imaginary fears and desires

(Herron 1993: 9). Both recognize the powerful

role aesthetics can play in imaginations of urbanity

and its futures, but are wary that images like

Moores may supersede a more concerted

attentiveness to the citys tangible problems.At times, Moores aesthetic does seem

to exceed viewers capacity to even see the

photographs as representing real situations, the

lush colors and formal appreciations of texture

distracting from the scenes at hand. Colberg

(2009) writes with consternation, Some of

the colours seem to have been tweaked to

make them look almost artificial, heightening

his impressions of unreality. Even more critically,Sarah Cox (2011), writing on the website

Curbed Detroit, asserts that Ruin porn is [a]

color wheel seductress for arts writers and

aesthetes everywhere. Yet the Curbed family

of sites, including New York, Boston, and San

Francisco iterations, purports its central mission

is to breathe life into real estate and to

relentlessly report on sales and rental prices,

new developments, neighborhood trends, andcelebrity deals, a baldly consumerist undertaking

that clearly has little interest in emotionally

charged ruins, which might, after all, negatively

affect property values (Curbed Network 2013).

Cox duplicitously mobilizes aesthetics against

Moore by casting beauty as a thing of consumer

value, accusing Moore of trafficking in thesickening loveliness of suffering, while she reclaims

beauty for the inflation of property values.

Despite Coxs unsettling deployment of

ruin porn, the label responds to a very real

fear that the current interest in ruins is either

an extension of the vilification of urbanity or a

touristic fetishizing of decay. For example, John

Patrick Lear y, a faculty member at Wayne State

University in Detroit and critic of Moores work,

elaborates the history of Detroits troubling uses

as a symbol of urban degradation. He highlights

documentarian Julien Temples recent references

to the people of Detroit as street zombies, a

phrase Leary believes is an apt summation of a

pervasive photographic style that reduces the

cityand its peopleto a mere shell (Leary

2011). Alas, Leary continues, a photograph can

tell us little about the citys real estate industry

and the states cheaply bought politicians. All itcan do is show the catastrophic results (2011).

Leary also echoes Herron (1993), Steinmetz

(2010), and Millington (2013) in arguing that

the consumers of these photographs are mostly

middle-class whites from Detroits suburbs

and other cities, whose superficial fascination

with Detroit is sustained by a vague sense of

historical pathos, absent in other, wealthier

cities (Leary 2011). Noreen Malone (2011),writing for The New Republic, reiterates Learys

concern that the photographs tend to divert

attention to the arresting appearance of ruin

instead of the actual struggles that daily engage

the people of Detroit: Without people in

them, she says, these pictures dont demand

as much of the viewer, exacting from her [an]

engagement on a purely aesthetic level.

Although these criticisms are rightlyconcerned with whether Moores photography

can intervene on a local scale in Detroits

troubling situation, they are perhaps unnecessarily

fearful that aesthetics veil Detroits problems and

are overly dismissive of a national debate that


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treats the city as both symbol and actual location.

An exchange recorded at a public talk at theQueens Museum is particularly revealing. In the

video, an audience member asks Moore how

his work and vision would have been changed

if he had been more attentive to other aspects

of Detroits contemporary landscape, especially

the new energy of urban farming efforts, a

burgeoning arts scene, and the growing visibility

of alternative community organizations (Queens

Museum 2012). Moore responds that although

he made some pictures of these facets of Detroit,

none were included in the final series as they

did not fit his particular focus on ruins, nor, in his

estimation, were they very aesthetically compelling

(Queens Museum 2012). In this statement,

Moore is careful to point out that he has selected

and elaborated a particular narrative thread,

and does not stake a claim to an exhaustive or

complete portrait of the city. In focusing on his

aesthetic approach to the city, Moore likewisegestures to the importance of not forgetting

the ruins and the long decades of struggle they

represent, even in the face of recent stirrings of

renewal. The experience of ruin is also broader

than the city of Detroit; patrons interviewed at

the Akron Museum of Art repeatedly identify

Detroit Disassembled with their experiences

of ruin in other Rust Belt cities such as Cleveland

and Youngstown, Ohio (Western Reserve PBS2010). Nor do these viewers take Moores

photographs as the final statement on Detroit

one interviewee says he recognizes the pictures

tell a sad story that has to be told, and he

love[s] the ar tistry, but he also realizes there

is a bigger story beyond the images (Western

Reserve PBS 2010). These responses suggest

that Moores photographs, despite their aesthetic

allure, do not preclude grounded interpretationsof Detroits condition, and can even expand

the citys relevance beyond local confines.

Another Moore photograph,Metropolitan

Building and Skyline, Downtown(Figure 2), provides

a particularly rich constellation of aesthetic and

formal tensions, which provide significant points

of departure for narratives about the broaderrelevance of Detroits ruins. The image affords

a lofty view of Detroits core. The Metropolitan

Building, which dominates the foreground,

evinces grandeur in its stately architectural details:

emblazoned shields and elegant stonework adorn

the parapet of an elevated balcony, exemplifying

the gothic revival, pre-Depression architecture

that still comprises much of Detroits skyline. The

soft, even exposure of the lighting suggests an

appreciation for the elegance of the structure.

Yet the Metropolitan Building is no object of

careful preservation. Dingy shards of glass hang

from broken windowpanes, and in the gloom

behind the parapet, stunted, half-dead saplings

rise from the disused balcony. Sealant peels

from between the stones, and a discarded beer

bottle sits below one of the windows along with

scattered pieces of trash. However, the building

in the upper left quarter of the frame evincesan entirely different era and style of architecture.

The structure is apparently occupied, but its

oblique, blank surfaces are difficult to read. This

skyscraper bears an unsightly red billboard,

marked by AT&Ts corporate icon, an instantly

recognizable blue-and-white-striped globe. A

closer inspection rewards the viewer with the

text of the advertisement: AT&T works in

more places, like NEWSANFRAKOTA (Figure 3).The advertisements butchered compression

of place names, NEWSANFRAKOTA, contrasted

with the crumbling architecture of the space

it addresses, impartsMetropolitan Buildingwith

a profound sense of ironic play. The billboard,

and the broader media network it represents,

overlooks Detroit in more than one sense. Quite

literally, the ad hails viewers from a position of

elevation, yet the elevated spot it facestheupper floors of the decaying Metropolitan

Buildingare clearly abandoned. The photograph

emphasizes the distance between the corporation

and city, counterposing the vacated spaces of

urban Detroit with a piece of media that seems


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Fig 2Metropolitan Building and Skyline, Downtown( Andrew Moore, 2010).


15/21



blithely unaware of the condition of the city

it addresses. Yet Detroits condition, thanks to

photography, circulates visually through precisely

the decentralized media networks evoked inthe AT&T advertisement. One reviewer argues

there is a connection between the media that

circulates Moores photography and his visual

syntax, which is tainted with a commercialism

most often associated with magazine assignments

(Radujko 2011). There are echoes of Coxs

criticism: Moore is a professional photographer,

not from Detroit, and therefore cannot

approach the city except from a commercializedperspective. Yet the contrast between the harsh

ugliness of the advertisement and the desolate

grandeur of the Metropolitan Building suggests

a critical take on the conversion of every public

space into a commercial venue for buying and

selling. The beauty of the wasted, crumbling

building in the face of corporate hucksterismis melancholic, not exultant or untroubled.

Indeed, six decades of unbroken population

decline renders the newer office building behind

the AT&T ad itself a gratuitous addition to the

city skyline, bizarrely constructed in the face of

expansive abandonment. Sharon Zukin argues

that modern imaginings of progress are aptly

summed up by economist Joseph Schumpeters

evocative phrase creative destruction, which

roots future innovations and prosperity in the

liquidation of past and present (Zukin 1991: 4).

This provides a cultural rationale for the apparent

waste of an extant building, but many viewers

see Detroit as a place where the seams of an

irrationally ravenous modernity have come apart,

evincing much destruction, but much less of the

vaunted creative renewal. Upon viewing Moores

images of decimated structures, Tim Tower

(2011), of the World Socialist Web Site, expressesdismay at the historical forces which have been

rending the city into smaller and smaller pieces,

especially the most recent proposals of right-

sizing, which will potentially demolish many more

structures, including inhabited houses in thinning

neighborhoods in order to forcibly relocate

residents to more densely populated districts.

According to Sarah Zabrodski (2012), Moores

photographs illustrate the essence of a cultureof waste distilled into large-scale buildings.

Metropolitan Buildingis an especially powerful

example of how Moores meditative eye and

attention to detail exceed a mere aesthetic

appreciation of ruins as colorful, textured objects,

instead pushing the definition of ruin beyond

the obvious appearance of decaying buildings to

encompass cultural tendencies and practicesthe

outward signs of AT&Ts corporate prosperityappear as insufficient, even vacuous, resuscitations

of the urban landscape.Metropolitan Building is a

precarious picture, revealing a distinct imbalance

in the urban landscape; the concluding section

of this article attempts to work through how

Fig 3 (Detail)Metropolitan Building and Skyline,

Downtown( Andrew Moore, 2010).


16/21



the ambiguities of ruin have pushed some

of Moores viewers to reframe narrativesof national progress and contest orthodox

acceptances of creative destruction.

Rising into Ruin: Speculations onDetroits FutureAlthough photographs like National Time Clock

andMetropolitan Buildingshow a relatively classic

face of ruin, Moore discovers even more illusive

and uncertain ruins in the continuing failure of

economic regeneration schemes to meaningfully

resurrect the citys social fabric. In fact, these

ambiguous ruins are arguably some of the most

dismal views in the series. Take, for example,

Abandoned Videoconferencing Room, Chase Tower,

Financial District(Figure 4). In comparison tomany of the images, Abandoned Videoconferencing

Roomis somewhat out of place; the photograph

contains no notable architectural details, no

variegated expanses of rust, no invading foliage,

no spectacle of decay. The image is, in fact,

hopelessly banal: a room, gray walled, lit by

banks of fluorescent lights, delimits the scene;

rows of red office chairs and a conference table

are the only characters. In the high center of

the image, embossed in large letters on the far

wall, the citys name stands out in an assertive

typefaceDETROITonly serving to announce

the rooms emptiness, and by extension, the

Fig 4Abandoned Videoconferencing Room, Chase Tower, Financial District( Andrew Moore, 2010).


17/21



citys vacancy. On the table in the foreground,

a sparse tangle of electronics cables, a blackoffice telephone, and some sundry documents

provide minimal visual interest. The technology

is contemporary: a blue Ethernet cable lies

unconnected to any computer, along with USB

conference microphones, waiting for a meeting

that will never transpire. It is an altogether bland

space, unattractively lit and furnished, constructed

with an indifference to style, decorated without

a thought to the niceties of matching colors.

This rooms ruin, and its signification of

ongoing waste, can be defined in terms of

abortive attempts to remake Detroits economy

in the context of postindustrialism. Promises

of redevelopment, contingent in Detroit and

elsewhere upon the construction of convention

centers, casinos, or modern office parks,

seem rather destined to rise, as Robert

Smithson might say, into ruin (Smithson

1996: 72). Empty rooms in the Chase Towerare likewise the monumental vacancies that

define, without trying, the memory-traces of

an abandoned set of futures (Smithson 1996:

72). Today, the abandoned videoconferencing

room is perhaps finding some use again at

the hands of new tenants: Quicken Loans

purchased the building from Chase in 2011,

moving some 2,300 workers to the tower

downtown (Quicken Loans 2011). YetDavid St.-Lascaux (2012), reviewing Detroit

Disassembled for the Brooklyn Rail, dismisses

such redevelopment; he compares Detroits

experiences at large to that of the abandoned

Domino Sugar factory, employing 4,500 at its

peak, [which] awaits, perhaps, gentrification on

the East River in Brooklyn. New York, we are

cheerfully told, is now a financialcenter. Resurget

Cineribus, my ass. Although he expressessome distaste for Moores photographs, St.-

Lascaux discerns vapidity in the promises of

postindustrial renewal through other financial

instrumentswhat remains worth holding

onto in Brooklyn is that 4,500 workers had to

lose their jobs to clear the way for something

elsesomething new, if hardly better.St.-Lascaux draws a specific example to

explain the relationship between himself and

Detroit, seeing the citys troubles as an emblem

of destructive trends observable in localities

everywhere. Although some viewers may be

uncertain about what the photographs say about

Detroits future, what exactly the pictures mean,

or the quality of the images, they are able to use

them to perceive how Detroit is relevant to a

broader range of experiences, identifying both

tangible examples and more abstract cultural

forces. Another commentator, Willy Staley, asks

viewers to consider these photographs and

stories a reminder that in America we actually

do abandon our neighbors and let our cities

die, time and time again (Staley 2011). In so

many readings of Detroit Disassembled loss is

prominent, but Staleys wording is the starkest.

His imagination of dissolving neighborly bondsre-localizes the pain of the citys protracted

downfall in human relationshipsa twinned loss

for the forsaken and for involuntary deserters.

Staleys words make the citys death harder to

bear, and fundamentally inescapablenewer

skyscrapers may someday rise in the place of

the Metropolitan Building, and some economic

resurrection may reanimate Detroits vast vacancy,

but even in this optimistic vision for the citysfuture, Detroit will not quite heal. The language

of societal collapse, which at first blush may strike

an overwrought tone, is perhaps an adequately

affecting term to describe the falling apart of

neighborhoods, of schools, of places of work and

playthe scattering of memories and personal

histories, which will never be reassembled.

However, Philip Levine, in an afterword for

the book edition of Detroit Disassembled,argues that the beauty in Moores images is not

only melancholic but stubborn, edifying, and even

hopeful. Levine grew up in Detroit, and worked,

reluctantly, in some of the now defunct factories

that Moore has photographed. Looking at the


18/21



images, he says, Their calm in the face of the

ravages of man and nature confer an unexpecteddignity upon the subjects of [Moores] camera, the

very dignity I had assumed daily life had robbed

them of, and also, Moores photographs honor

what is most ignored and despised among us

(Levine 2010: 117). Dignity for the despised

is indeed a noble cause, and as Levine puts it,

the photographs have allowed him to see that

Detroit still matters, and that its story is not

finished. And yet Levine must be counted among

the many who have left Detroit, setting out for

other parts in 1954. In this sense, the photographs

make it possible to occupy the city once again,

but only visually. The viewer eventually leaves the

gallery, shuts the book, or navigates to another

webpage. Perhaps Detroit appeared beautiful,

honored, and sad to the viewer, and perhaps this

mix of feelings remains uncertain, irresolvable.

Even so, Levine notes the tiny patches of grass

and clover, vivid and green evidence of anew growth and that the world doesnt quit

(Levine 2010: 114). Two viewers at the Akron

Museum of Art echo this dubiously hopeful

perspective on the citys future. One says that

Moores pictures do not show a decay that is

cold [but] decay that is actually renewing

itself, and another concludes, Even though these

structures are empty and abandoned and man

has nothing to do with it anymore, the earth isstill interested in it, so its kind of cool (Western

Reserve PBS 2010). There may be a profundity of

human failure visible in the cityscape, but humans

may not have the last word on the citys fate.

Viewers may therefore leave Moores Detroit

Disassembled a little disillusioned about the

human capacity to destroy and incapacity to put

things back together again, but eerily heartened

by the sights of new, green things growingwhere people used to live. It is likely true that

Moores photographs do not do much to shore

up efforts to redevelop Detroits downtown

as a financial district, to increase revenues at

the citys new national league sports stadiums,

or to sell residential real estate. Indeed, they

may make such attempts appear a little nave,if not facile, because tremendous uncertainties

remain for Detroits future. Some viewers will still

insist that Moore has made the wrong images

of Detroit and has tastelessly aestheticized the

pain of citys inhabitants, but the photographs

provide a flashpoint for a discourse that moves

beyond images. Maybe other viewers of Detroit

Disassembled subsequently see the world a little

differently, with a somewhat altered awareness as

to what it means to build somethinga factory,

a neighborhood, a friendshipand to abandon

those things. No explicit political movement may

be born of Moores photographs, and perhaps no

art can be an adequate riposte to the suffering of

a city, but the images show clearly that things left

behind do not simply fade away. Even as those

who still live in the city continue to disperse, their

absence leaves a mark. Neither Andrew Moore

nor his viewers can rewrite Detroits history, butif the photographs can continue to arrest the

attention of viewers and cause them to question

the pace of development and the onward rush

of national time, then perhaps the photographs

can help shift the meanings of progress and

pose a challenge to creative destruction,

forestalling the processes whereby human

endeavors rise, rapidly and inevitably, into ruin.

Notes

1 In one of our interviews, Moore recalled seeing

Stephen Shores work as a photography student

at Princeton, but found Shores photos (and his

New Topographicscohorts work) too dry

emotionally (Moore 2011a). Moore avers he was

more impacted by the rich use of color in the prints

of Joel Sternfeld. Nevertheless, the influential New

Topographics(1975) exhibitions treatment of

the relationship between human landscapes and

nature is part of the genealogy of Moores work.

See: Salvesen (2010). Joel Sternfelds large-format

photographs have been collected in a number of

monographs, especially the influentialAmerican

Prospects; see Sternfeld (1987). Richard Misrach


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is another ear ly large-format color photographer,

whose work on the ruins and environmental

problems related to petrochemical production,military exercises in the American Southwest, and

post-Katrina New Orleans provide important

examples of the intersections between photography

and ruins. See Misrach (1987, 2010, 2012).

2 Moores photographs of Russia, Cuba, and

Governors Island, New York, have been collected

in monographs, and his images have appeared in

museum and gallery exhibitions across the US

and internationally. For a full list of publications,

exhibitions, and reviews, see Moore (n.d.).

3 The literature on postindustrialism and

deindustrialization is extensive, and while this

article draws on some key texts to explicate

the experiences of Detroit and other urban

centers, it omits a broader overview, for

that has been accomplished elsewhere. See

Rowthorn and Ramaswamy (1997), Cowie

and Heathcott (2003), and High (2003).

4 Among the more notable photographers whohave recently pictured Detroit are Alec Soth

(2009), who published pictures of Detroits

abandoned buildings in the UK newspaper The

Telegraph, and the photojournalist Ryan Spencer

Reed (2011), who composed a short selection of

similar images under the title Detroit Forsaken

for Photo Technique. Locals and tourists have

likewise driven Detroits photographic presence,

especially on public platforms such as Flickr, which

boasts hundreds of thousands of tagged photos

of Detroits abandoned structures. Beyond theseruins-centric efforts, Magnum photographer

Bruce Gildens (2008) photo essay, Detroit: The

Troubled City, combines affecting images and

audio of Detroit residents facing foreclosure.

5 Vergaras statements about his work and

methodology, as well as a representative sample

of his photography, can be found on his website:

see Vergara (n.d.). His Detroit photography was

also concurrently exhibited with Moores Detroit

Disassembled at the National Building Museum inWashington, DC, from September 2012February

2013. See National Building Museum (2012).

Andrew Gansky is a doctoral student in American

Studies and a public services intern at the Harry

Ransom Center at the University of Texas at

Austin. His interests in photography encompassthe histories of technology and medicine,

surveillance, urbanity, and body visualization.

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