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AUTHOR TALK: DETROIT IS NO DRY BONES - CAMILO VERGARA

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AUTHOR TALK: DETROIT IS NO DRY BONES – CAMILO VERGARA

January 25, 2017 @ 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm EST

Join us for an evening of conversation moderated by U-M Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning Interim Dean Robert Fishman with photographer Camilo Vergara about his recent photography collection about Detroit. A photographic record of almost three decades of Detroit’s changing urban fabric Camilo José Vergara was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow in 2002 and received a Berlin Prize Fellowship in 2010. In 2013, he became the first photographer to be awarded the National Humanities Medal. He is author of numerous books, including Silent Cities: The Evolution of the American Cemetery; Twin Towers Remembered; and Harlem: The Unmaking of a Ghetto. Over the past 25 years, award-winning ethnographer and photographer Camilo José Vergara has traveled annually to Detroit to document not only the city’s precipitous decline but also how its residents have survived. From the 1970s through the 1990s, changes in Detroit were almost all for the worse, as the built fabric of the city was erased through neglect and abandonment.But over the last decade Detroit has seen the beginnings of a positive transformation, and the photography in Detroit Is No Dry Bones provides unique documentation of the revival and its urbanistic possibilities. Beyond the fate of the city’s buildings themselves, Vergara’s camera has consistently sought to capture the lives of Detroit’s people. Not only has he shown the impact of depopulation, disinvestment, and abandonment during the worst years of the urban crisis, but he has also shown Detroiters’ resilience. The photographs in this book are organized in part around the way people have re-used and re-purposed structures from the past. One highlight is his documentation of local churches that have re-occupied old bank buildings and other impressive structures from the past and turned them into something unexpectedly powerful, architecturally as well as spiritually.

But over the last decade Detroit has seen the beginnings of a positive transformation, and the photography in Detroit Is No Dry Bones provides unique documentation of the revival and its urbanistic possibilities. Beyond the fate of the city’s buildings themselves, Vergara’s camera has consistently sought to capture the lives of Detroit’s people. Not only has he shown the impact of depopulation, disinvestment, and abandonment during the worst years of the urban crisis, but he has also shown Detroiters’ resilience. The photographs in this book are organized in part around the way people have re-used and re-purposed structures from the past. One highlight is his documentation of local churches that have re-occupied old bank buildings and other impressive structures from the past and turned them into something unexpectedly powerful, architecturally as well as spiritually.

Details

Date:
January 25, 2017
Time:
7:00 pm - 8:00 pm EST
Event Category:
Website:
https://taubmancollege.umich.edu/events/2017/01/25/author-talk-detroit-no-dry-bones-camilo-vergara

Venue

Literati Book Store
124 E. Washington
Ann Arbor, MI 48104 United States
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