supercalafragalistic: Velocity

Velocity, inspired by Yves Marchand and Roman Meffre’s evocative tableaux shots of Detroit in ruins. Revealing once magnificently beautiful buildings, abandoned. Often with breathtakingly ornate interiors and everyday fittings surprisingly intact. Left in a broken state of suspension http://www.marchandmeffre.com/detroit/index.html

I was particularly drawn by the melted clock at Cass Technical High School. It reminded me of Dali’s surreal Time painting and gave me the idea of someone calling time on Detroit – my central theme.

Perhaps the most poignant shot, the files of the missing and murdered left scattered, spilled on the floor of the Highland Park police office. Chiming with the sudden abandonment of Chernobyl, both cities built on industrialisation and equally destroyed by it. Albeit Detroit’s a more slow burn, less catastrophic destruction. Both cities, once beacons of success, sadly left to decay. A reminder that nothing lasts forever, buildings crumble, beauty fades, bodies weaken and in the end, all is dust.

Velocity

Someone clocked out the assembly line of Detroit
Henry Ford’s motor city and dynamo of the American Dream
The nation’s fourth largest city in its 50’s glory days

Someone drove away the auto factories and plants
New highways and out of town plants splayed the landscape
Just as fast as Detroit’s workers moth’d to the flame, they left

Someone took their foot off the city’s gas
After the riots of ’67, once vibrant neighbourhoods vanished
As the rich foot-to-the-metalled-it out to the suburbs

Someone crushed the spirit of a million migrant workers
Fuelled by a burning desire for money and success
Sparking the city's plugs with their sleek, shiny vision

Someone abandoned the grandiose buildings,
the extravagant theatres, the great schools and libraries
Even the murdered and missing lay scattered in forgotten files

Someone wrecked that once magnificent city of dreams
Now a sad, sorry tableau of rot, ruin and decay
Preserved, mummified like a long lost empire

Someone scrapped any sense of permanence
As the piston of industrialisation fired fast, ever faster
That which created Detroit also destroyed it.