The automotive industry was the center of Detroit’s economy between the end of the 19th century and the early 1970s, when the first oil

shock and incipient globalisation decimated industrial production, contributing to a decades-long crisis. The monument to the growth

and demise of the automotive industry in Detroit is its highway network. Built to make the car the only means of transportation, it

reminds me of a hydraulic system, which crisscrosses neighbourhoods, often creating insurmountable obstacles in their midst. Flanked

and squeezed in by high banks, cars and trucks move along river bottoms, while small and large buildings run by swiftly along the

sides. When you drive into the city, the highways rush toward you and then vanish into uncontrollable curvilinear points of fugue.

I took photographs from the passenger seat, reacting instinctively to the stimuli that came from outside the vehicle. I let Photoshop turn

parts of the images into black and white, while leaving others in colour. The algorithms play the “third eye”, enabling me to reproduce

the experience of looking at fast-moving objects from inside your vehicle: some capture our attention, while others are barely noticed.

The result is a highly selective but revealing portrait of Detroit, which we “imagine” beyond the highways/river banks, road signals,

billboards, tall or low buildings and electrical wires that dominate our immediate surroundings and loom over us from above.

Originally, my plan was to collect images through the four seasons of the year. A sudden and unwelcome change in my personal life

forced me to end that project. The photographs you see here were taken in late winter, with feeble hints of spring here and there. In

Michigan spring does not really show itself until mid-May!