The ruins of Detroit by Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre

Without a doubt “The Ruins of Detroit” by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre is the best photography monograph to come out this year and one of the most beautifully produced art books I’ve ever seen. Within the space of a few months it has become the ultimate work on its subject and it is hard to believe that any future publication will top it.
In this monograph the photographers manage to capture the full scope of the decline and decay experienced by the city of Detroit. Rather than just the usual, well documented, abandoned factories which have become a symbol for this ruined city Marchand and Meffre have chosen subjects from every area of the city’s life. They have photographed churches, schools, theatres, apartment buildings and whole desolated streets. The wide choice of subjects really brings home that the devastation is not confined to the poorer areas of the city, some of the more poignant photographs show the sagging gilt and tattered velvet of theatres and ballrooms lining the main boulevards.
One of the surprising facts “The Ruins of Detroit” reveals is that although we mostly think of the state of the city as a product of previous decline, particularly the great depression of the 1930’s, the abandonment of buildings is still going on today and more and more of the city is being left to rot. In some of the last photographs of the book the authors show a series of pictures of the Jane Cooper Elementary School which was closed in 2007. The first photograph shows a wide view of the building in what the authors refer to as “a gigantic no mans land” and we can see that the residential neighbourhood which once surrounded the school has started to disappear. In the subsequent photographs Marchand and Meffre have shown the state of the schools rooms a year after their abandonment in the spring of 2008 and then again a year later in 2009. In the space of a year between the pictures the school has been stripped, anything left has been smashed and scattered and signs of fire damage can be seen.
The short history of the city at the start of the book and the running comments throughout take us through the story of Detroit’s decline and the magic of the collection as a whole is that it has managed to show us not just what the city has become but what it once was and how far it has fallen. Far from being just a photography monograph this book is a work of social commentary on one of Americas most notorious cities mostly shown through fantastic images taken with a high level of skill and dedication to the subject.

Roll up, roll up, take your seats for a literary extravaganza!

Welcome to the literary ramblings of a bookseller and a book studier. Surrounding oneself with books is life's chief pleasure. Knowing that marvellous worlds and great minds are but the turn of a page away makes it easier then ever to slip out of this mundane world. If you've ever spent spent a Friday night counting the books on your shelves and just waiting for the day when you reach the magic one thousand or alphabetising and organising your books by genre then this is the blog for you. Between us we have some fairly eclectic reading tastes and you can expect a wide range of reviews and recomendtons from fantastic fiction to the most aesthetically pleasing photography monographs of the last twenty years. Always expect something surprising. As well as book reviews we'll also be putting up some bits of creative writing as well as musings and ponderings on the nature of all things literary. Have a peruse and if you like what you see hang around.