Raise Your Hand if You're Sick and Tired of RUIN PORN

[Lowell]

I can appreciate a photographer or a journalist who is legitimately interested in Detroit, someone who covers the whole story. Why would you photograph a blighted building, but fail to shoot the one right across the street that has been fully restored? It's because they only care about the demise. They know that pictures of the renovated Fort Shelby won't draw 200 hits a day to their blog.

Any big story will have many responses, some thoughtful, some ridiculous and some will hyperventilate but mostly it is genuinely naive interest and fascination. The net result is that the amid all the chatter the overall level of conversation about our condition has risen greatly. The ruins of Detroit were always exceptional but were treated like an embarrassment to be avoided in conversation.

I was approached by a man when I was photographing an abandoned apartment building on the westside.

"Why do you want to photograph a nasty old building like that," he challenged.

"Look at it," I said, "It's beautiful. Nothing like it will ever be built again."

He paused for a while, looked at it, and said in a hand-on-the-chin thoughtful pose, "You're right somebody ought to do something with it."

Music to my ears. BTW someone rehabbed it a couple of years later.