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

[AUSSIE]

Maybe there is more to life than McDonalds and FaceBook?

I for one cannot get enough of these old buildings and ruins, whats not to like?

Detroit was a powerhouse, its something nearly every other city will never have

Best summed up by Italian Mussolini:

"Better one day as a lion, than 100 as a sheep"


Cheers

[southen]

great line for a dictator, unbelievably stupid when referencing a city...

[Gistok]

great line for a dictator, unbelievably stupid when referencing a city...

Ryan.... common.... play nice... he's a newbie from down under who just started posting here....

G'day AUSSIE..... and welcome...

[southen]

I get being fascinated by ruins, I fall into that camp, but "what's not to like?" that's a bit much.

[Bad Brains]

I used to like what became known as "Ruin Porn", until the hobby enjoyed by few got hijacked by the Hipster community around late 2009/early 2010 [[Some might even argue earlier).

Next thing you know, girls and boys in skinny jeans and flip-flops started wandering around some of our favorite spots, horribly processed HDR images flooded Frickr, and to top it off, HORRIBLE websites like Motor City Muckraker popped up with people trying to do what Detroit Blog was doing 10 years ago. Oh well. Everything goes in phases. I still enjoy the work of the some of the "old-schoolers" who were around back then, and who are still doing their thing now.

[AUSSIE]

Ryan.... common.... play nice... he's a newbie from down under who just started posting here....

G'day AUSSIE..... and welcome...

Thanks, great website and knowledge here too!

Leave him be, i am up for a bit of a fight....lol

Cheers

[Gistok]

Thanks AUSSIE, but Southen and I are always on the same page on forum posts... he's one of the forum posters [[like myself) who doesn't hide behind an alias [[hence me calling him by his first name).

If you search Flickr using the "Ryan Southen" search name... you will be stunned by Ryan's vast amount of stunning photos of all things Detroit. He's a very gifted photographer... gone pro...

One of my all time favorite images he produced he calls "GOTHAM".... it's a brooding almost terrifying b/w image of Detroit's [[currently empty) 36 story Book Tower... a vision that although very much over the top in details, appears almost nightmarish....
http://www.flickr.com/photos/southen...57594049563033

[Django]

Thanks AUSSIE, but Southen and I are always on the same page on forum posts... he's one of the forum posters [[like myself) who doesn't hide behind an alias [[hence me calling him by his first name).

If you search Flickr using the "Ryan Southen" search name... you will be stunned by Ryan's vast amount of stunning photos of all things Detroit. He's a very gifted photographer... gone pro...

One of my all time favorite images he produced he calls "GOTHAM".... it's a brooding almost terrifying b/w image of Detroit's [[currently empty) 36 story Book Tower... a vision that although very much over the top in details, appears almost nightmarish....
http://www.flickr.com/photos/southen...57594049563033

Southen is no doubt one of Detroits greatest photographers but I often dont agree with his words.

The whole "Whats not to like" quote could be seen in different ways.

Who wouldn't want to be a lion for a day instead of a sheep? But then again, are we all sheep now?

I love "ruin porn" if you want to call it that. Ive always wanted the world to see us in all our failures and all our glory, its best for the future to learn from our mistakes.

[p69rrh51]

Thanks AUSSIE, but Southen and I are always on the same page on forum posts... he's one of the forum posters [[like myself) who doesn't hide behind an alias [[hence me calling him by his first name).

If you search Flickr using the "Ryan Southen" search name... you will be stunned by Ryan's vast amount of stunning photos of all things Detroit. He's a very gifted photographer... gone pro...

One of my all time favorite images he produced he calls "GOTHAM".... it's a brooding almost terrifying b/w image of Detroit's [[currently empty) 36 story Book Tower... a vision that although very much over the top in details, appears almost nightmarish....
http://www.flickr.com/photos/southen...57594049563033

Gistok usually you have good take on most threads around here and you have dropped me a line about Ryan. I have met him in the past and I was very disappointed, I found him to be very smug, dismissive and condescending, plus he is very flippant on here. I dropped AUSSIE a pm mainly because of Mr. Southern's usual snippy comment. My name is Benjamin Gravel so we keep this up front[[also the same on facebook). Now I can be obnoxious but I like to push buttons to see where they go.
One of my father's best friends represented most of the best photographers in the metro area from the 1960's to 1990's and Mr. Southern is not anywhere close to their league. He is a very good amateur but still has a way to go before he reaches "pro" status. He also has not reached the status to act like he does! Sorry Lowell I promised to behave but this time I needed to speak out. As for ruin porn I am luke warm I have seen so much destruction in the last 50 years I prefer to concentrate on the good buildings/homes we have left!

[southen]

the beauty of photography and art is that it's in the eye of the beholder. lucky for me enough people enjoy my work that its all I do. But thanks for the critique and sorry I disappointed you.

my comment was regarding a quote that I think is silly when talking about a city. I used to explore these places and take photos, because its interesting, but I disagree that we should be proud of these ruins. what's not to like? ask the people that live near them or the people who visit whose entire view of the region is based on an abandonment. they are fascinating for why they exist and how they are portrayed in photos, but we shouldn't be proud of them for reasons of nostalgia or tout them as attractions.

[night-timer]

Originally Posted by JenniferLA photo of a naked person can be either art or pornography, depending on how it's done, who does it, and what is their intention. The same goes for photos of ruins. If the photographer is attempting to show beauty in the ruins, or to stir the viewer into some sort of social consciousness, then it's art. But if the photographer's sole aim is to shock, then it's ruin porn.

its actually not what the artist intends to do at all.

because after he or she clicks that shutter. its out of his or her hands. people will make their own decision on what they see.

Art is "open to interpretation" but that doesn't mean the subjective interpretations of viewers is accurate or displays a proper understanding of what the artist intended to convey.

I'm a professional photographer. I have never been to the D. In fact, I've never been anywhere near the place.

I have shot for Associated Press, Reuters and Corbis - I still do, in fact.

Believe you me, if you have never heard of Reuters or Corbis you are not a professional photographer and never have been.

Best of luck to any Detroiter who can't hack looking at ruins. It'll be a hard run for you, methinks.

There is no money in ruin porn. Professional photography is market driven, not emotively or artistically driven, even though you need to have an understanding and mastery of those things as well to do your job effectively. [[Plus technical grounding, and all the rest.)

So, ruin porn photography is always gonna be done by photographers marching to their own beat to satisfy their own interests. They will be motivated by artistic [[not commercial) motives and they will do whatever pleases themselves. Tough luck if you don't like it - they only have to answer to themselves.

How do we gauge whether ruin porn pictures are 'harmful' or not? Where do you draw the line at telling others what they should or shouldn't photograph? There will be news stories or news crews in the D, but their coverage will generally be no more 'positive' than the voyeuristic works of ruin porn blight lovers.

Some of these 'porno' shooters will enjoy the juxtaposition and/or irony of grand buildings in a derelict state, others may want to make a sociological statement [[if it hasn't all been said before).

Those abandoned buildings are no longer office blocks housing the captains of industry - to me they have almost come to resemble massive gravestones, continual reminders of a by-gone era.

How you interpet these things is an 'individual effort' - some see tragedy and failure, impending doom, messy capitalism, a deserted post-apocalyptic eerieness, or whatever chord it strikes in you. Visitors passing through may see a different or superficial view to people who have spent their entire life in the D.

[G-DDT]

I don't know, but I think there might be some Indian chick in a corner here with odd skin that has many multiple hands raised.

[sumas]

Southen is no doubt one of Detroits greatest photographers but I often dont agree with his words.

The whole "Whats not to like" quote could be seen in different ways.

Who wouldn't want to be a lion for a day instead of a sheep? But then again, are we all sheep now?

I love "ruin porn" if you want to call it that. Ive always wanted the world to see us in all our failures and all our glory, its best for the future to learn from our mistakes.

Django, you are an excellent photographer also and an artist in your own right. Still wish you would take pics of my hood for DY friends in other countries. We have such beauty and such ruin. Such community, such crime.

[sumas]

I don't know, but I think there might be some Indian chick in a corner here with odd skin that has many multiple hands raised.

would that be the dancing Shiva?

[Hermod]

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Percy Blythe Shelley

[sumas]

Ouch, Hermod, but thanks for sharing. Tennyson is my favorite poet. The Brook, "men may come and men may go, but I go on forever" paraphrase maybe, sorry about that. Another poem, Ulysses [[sp), "as though to breathe were life".

We need to breathe life back to the city at large. It can be done.