driving detroit
In the second half of the twentieth century, Detroit was made and destroyed by the automobile. The city's highway network reminds me of a hydraulic system, whose branches crisscross neighbourhoods, often creating unsurmountable obstacles in their midst. Flanked, and squeezed in by high banks, cars and trucks seem to move along river bottoms, while small and large buildings run by swiftly along the sides. When I drive into the city, I can see the highways coming quickly toward me and vanishing into beautiful and uncontrollable curvilinear points of fugue. In Driving Detroit I take photographs from the passenger seat, reacting quickly and instinctively to the stimuli that come from outside the vehicle. In the editing phase, I entrust to Photoshop’s tools the task of turning parts of the images into black and white, while leaving others in colour. I let the software and its algorithms play the role of “third eye,” which enables me to reproduce the experience of looking at objects from a fast-moving vehicle, in which some things capture our attention, while others are barely noticed. The result is a highly selective but revealing portrait of Detroit, which we can somehow “imagine” beyond the highway/ river banks, road signals, billboards, tall or low buildings, and electrical wires that dominate our immediate surroundings and loom over us from above. 13x19 Edition: 7+2AP, 2019 Archival pigment print on Canson Baryta paper INQUIRE |
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