the result of a five year collaboration between photographers yves marchand and romain meffre, "the ruins of detroit" is a fascinating study of a once great city slowly crumbling into dust. once the heart of american industrialization, detroit was a beacon for forward thinking ideas. it is the spiritual home of the automobile and the birth place of motown. can you even imagine a world without cars or how different the music we listen to today would sound like? detroit is now but a shadow of it's golden past but the cultural impact this city has had is immeasurable.
looking at these images, with their grand interiors of towering arches and intricate plaster work falling into decay, it gives off an almost eerie impression of looking at helenic ruins such as the parthenon. a micro example of what our civilization would eventually look like if it ever were to collapse. greece was the center of the western world for a thousand years, egypt even longer than that. and what we have left of their great civilizations asides from their intellectual inheritance, are, let's face facts, dilapidated monuments. but to see it happen in our modern age makes me wonder about the mortality of our way of life. quite a heavy thing to propose to my thoughts, but it is works like this that affirms that brilliant ideas that provoke will always be the engine that drives us forward. even though some, including cities, become casualties of progress.
