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Email: info@tristanhoare.com All Contents © Copyright 1998-2012 Tristan Hoare
Yves Marchand &
Romain Meffre:
'The Ruins of Detroit'
Melted Clock, Cass Technical High School, 2008
Ballroom, Lee Plaza Hotel, 2006
United Artists Theatre, 2005
"Ruins are the visible symbols and landmarks of
our societies and their changes, small pieces of
history in suspension." Yves Marchand and Romain
Meffre
Tristan Hoare and Julien Dobbs-Higginson are
pleased to present a selection of photographs
from the much acclaimed body of work The Ruins
of Detroit (published: Steidl, 2010). Photographs
from this series have previously been exhibited in
Ville Fertile, Cité de l'architecture et du
patrimoine, Paris and Metropolis, Noorderlicht
Photofestival, Groningen. They will be shown in
the UK for the first time.
The Ruins of Detroit is a five year collaboration
between French photographers Yves Marchand and
Romain Meffre. Together they have documented
Detroit's abandoned buildings, thus bringing to
light the current state of 'Motor City' through a
cinematic series of starkly beautiful photographs.
Shooting with a large format, custom made
camera, taking advantage of natural light and
using long exposures, the images embody the
unique atmosphere of each location. Marchand
and Meffre's work retains a formal quality and is
conceived as a document, giving the viewer a
surreal glimpse of Detroit's former glory. Like the
great civilizations of the past, we interpret them
through their remains.
Once one of the wealthiest cities in the world,
Detroit produced the single most important
consumer product of the modern age; the
automobile. At its peak, it was the world capital
of car production and home to two million people.
One factory, The Ford River Rouge Plant,
employed more than 90,000 workers and its
assembly line extended for almost a mile. This
monumental success attracted the great
architects of the period and the eclecticism of the
city's building programme reflected every fashion
of the day.
Yet the American dream soon turned into a
nightmare. The 1950s saw machines replace
workers and, in the following decades, hundreds
of thousands of jobs were lost as the international
car market changed beyond recognition and
foreign car manufacturers successfully competed
for their share of the US market.
The images bring to mind a Biblical disaster; it is
as if all Detroit's citizens had fled. The abandoned
factories and buildings, vacant schools and
derelict ballrooms, to name but a few, are a
poignant reminder of the fragility of the modern
world and, possibly on a different scale, of a now
'broken America'. These beautiful, but disturbing,
images look un-compromisingly at the remains of
the once-astonishing Detroit, as a then global
center of capitalism and its following, even more
extraordinary, descent into ruin. One is reminded
of Detroit's prophetic motto:
Speramus meliora, resurget cineribus ("We hope
for better things, which shall rise from the
ashes")
Detroit Public Schools Book Depository, 2007
Melted Clock, Cass Technical High School, 2008
Ballroom, Lee Plaza Hotel, 2006
United Artists Theatre, 2005
"Ruins are the visible symbols and landmarks of
our societies and their changes, small pieces of
history in suspension." Yves Marchand and Romain
Meffre
Tristan Hoare and Julien Dobbs-Higginson are
pleased to present a selection of photographs
from the much acclaimed body of work The Ruins
of Detroit (published: Steidl, 2010). Photographs
from this series have previously been exhibited in
Ville Fertile, Cité de l'architecture et du
patrimoine, Paris and Metropolis, Noorderlicht
Photofestival, Groningen. They will be shown in
the UK for the first time.
The Ruins of Detroit is a five year collaboration
between French photographers Yves Marchand and
Romain Meffre. Together they have documented
Detroit's abandoned buildings, thus bringing to
light the current state of 'Motor City' through a
cinematic series of starkly beautiful photographs.
Shooting with a large format, custom made
camera, taking advantage of natural light and
using long exposures, the images embody the
unique atmosphere of each location. Marchand
and Meffre's work retains a formal quality and is
conceived as a document, giving the viewer a
surreal glimpse of Detroit's former glory. Like the
great civilizations of the past, we interpret them
through their remains.
Once one of the wealthiest cities in the world,
Detroit produced the single most important
consumer product of the modern age; the
automobile. At its peak, it was the world capital
of car production and home to two million people.
One factory, The Ford River Rouge Plant,
employed more than 90,000 workers and its
assembly line extended for almost a mile. This
monumental success attracted the great
architects of the period and the eclecticism of the
city's building programme reflected every fashion
of the day.
Yet the American dream soon turned into a
nightmare. The 1950s saw machines replace
workers and, in the following decades, hundreds
of thousands of jobs were lost as the international
car market changed beyond recognition and
foreign car manufacturers successfully competed
for their share of the US market.
The images bring to mind a Biblical disaster; it is
as if all Detroit's citizens had fled. The abandoned
factories and buildings, vacant schools and
derelict ballrooms, to name but a few, are a
poignant reminder of the fragility of the modern
world and, possibly on a different scale, of a now
'broken America'. These beautiful, but disturbing,
images look un-compromisingly at the remains of
the once-astonishing Detroit, as a then global
center of capitalism and its following, even more
extraordinary, descent into ruin. One is reminded
of Detroit's prophetic motto:
Speramus meliora, resurget cineribus ("We hope
for better things, which shall rise from the
ashes")
Detroit Public Schools Book Depository, 2007