4 April 2010

The Ruins Of Detroit

This is what happens when you abandon a building and let it be for half a century. These outstanding photo's, The ruins of Detroit, are made by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre.

" At the beginning of the 20th Century, the city of Detroit
developed rapidly thanks to the automobile industry.
Until the 50's, its population rose to almost 2 million people.
Detroit was the 4th most important city in the United States.
It was the dazzling symbol of the American Dream City with
its monumental skyscrapers and fancy neighborhoods.
Increasing segregation and deindustrialization caused violent riots in 1967.
The white middle-class exodus from the city accelerated and the suburbs grew.
Firms and factories began to close or move to lower-wage states.
Slowly, but inexorably downtown high-rise buildings emptied.
Since the 50's, "Motor City" lost more than half of its population.
Nowadays, its splendid decaying monuments are, no less than the Pyramids of Egypt,
the Coliseum of Rome, or the Acropolis in Athens, remnants of the passing of a great civilization.
"





www.marchandmeffre.com

29 comments:

  1. "Folks think I'm big in Detroit city,
    From the letter that I write, they think I'm fine,
    But by day I make the cars and at night I make the bars,
    If they could only read between the lines."

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  2. Awesome! Really love the warped clock. I wonder how that could naturally happen...

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  3. ^.. It's called Dalitus, it's when someone takes acid and realises that time is an illusion, the mere thought warps the clocks making them akin to Dali's "Melting clocks"

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  4. It just resembles the movie 2012 ............
    might happen in the future to world

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  5. beginning of the 20th Century, the city of Detroit
    developed rapidly thanks to the automobile industry.
    Until the 50's, its population rose to almost 2 million people.
    Detroit was the 4th most important city in the United States.
    It was the dazzling symbol of the American Dream City with
    its monumental skyscrapers and fancy neighborhoods.
    Increasing segregation and deindustrialization caused violent riots in 1967.
    The white middle-class exodus from the city accelerated and the suburbs grew.
    Firms and factories began to close or move to lower-wage states.
    Slowly, but inexorably downtown high-rise buildings emptied.
    Since the 50's, "Motor City" lost more than half of its population.
    Nowadays, its splendid decaying monuments are, no less than the Pyramids of Egypt,
    the Coliseum of Rome, or the Acropolis in Athens, remnants of the passing of a great civilization

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  6. It's not Dali's "Melting Clocks" The painting that is so famous with the clocks melting is called "The Persistence of Memory". But nice try.

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  7. "Awesome! Really love the warped clock. I wonder how that could naturally happen..."

    Look at the peeling paint around the clock. How about heat? You surely can't be that dense...it wasn't magic or anything.

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  8. The clock melting? It's a miracle like magnets and rainbows.

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  9. Nice to see the suburban Detroit area.

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  10. AHHHH, my lovely Detroit... I gave you the best of my years...

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  11. Where's all the black people??

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  12. The clock face is a lens, like the glass front part. the numbers and stuff inside are probably way smaller than they look but the front distorts everything inside.

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  13. Umm... there's a video of a kid going into the house at the top and it collapsing with him inside. So just so you know, that house is gone.

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  14. I want to go to there....

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  15. at least im contributing to this.
    http://www.break.com/usercontent/2009/5/building-collapses-with-man-inside-744274.html
    its a video of some prick getting owned by that son-of-a-bitch gravity.

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  16. The clock was in Cass Tech. It became warped after a fire broke out there in 2007.

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  17. I don't need to be reminded of how my poor city looks. But I am grateful for these ruins, because looking at them, you can see just how god damn beautiful it used to be. It still looks beautiful to me.

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  18. I was born and bred in Detroit, that shithole was never beautiful.

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  19. This is what happens when liberal Democrats run a town for decades. The state of California is broke and heading toward this. And now they have started on the whole country. This is the result of big government, Big Spending and Big taxes. And the results of socialism.

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  20. Joe the flower looks like gay satan out of southpark.

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  21. @Joe Actually if you would do your proper research it was because of unsupervised markets and large corporations doing whatever the hell they want. Much like Republicans propose to do. Detroit is sadly one of the outcomes of such capitalist ideas such as deregulation (capitalism isn't all bad but you can't assume that by allowing companies to act in good faith that they will). And you live in America, you really need to learn the definition of socialism before you act like it's a bad thing. What do you think public roads, libraries, parks (including the National ones), firefighters (back in the early 19th century they were privatized and literally would let building burn to the ground), cops, EMTs, highways, civil servants are? A result of socialist policies in our own country.

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  22. well spoken, i dont think people actually understand at all what is meant by the word socialism. its become a buzz word to inspire fear in weak minded americans

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  23. just as we went from agriculture to industry-- there is always a transition when we have gone form industry (or working with one's hands) to technology...

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  24. Why is the clock warped? You can't explain that. It's just like the tide coming in and going out. You can't explain that.

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  25. hahahah i get the last persons joke. that was funny.

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  26. "no less than the Pyramids of Egypt,
    the Coliseum of Rome, or the Acropolis in Athens, remnants of the passing of a great civilization" Are you fucking kidding me?

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  27. That poor amazing house.

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  28. that clock was in a fire if u look close some 1 cleand it with a 1 way stroke

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  29. This is ridiculous. I live in Detroit, and sure, there are parts of it that are obviously really run down. But WAY too many people come through the city looking to take pictures and leave, returning to their happy little suburbs claiming to have survived the "toughest city on earth". The part that everybody misses is that Detroit is starting to wake up. It really is magical. Like that auditorium, 7th from the top (under the picture of grand central station) is in the process of being converted into an even better concert hall by kids straight out of CCS. So quit it with the tourism and politics, because you don't know the half of it.

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