Found Photos
in Detroit
By Arianna Arcara, Luca Santese
In 2009 and 2010 Arianna Arcara & Luca Santese made trips to Detroit not to photograph but to gather discarded images found outside the countless deserted buildings.
The project is an informal archive of hundreds images from the 1970s and 1990s, when the decline of the city was beginning. They appear to have been taken by the Police or other state authorities as evidence of various crimes, accidents, suspect and victims, mostly in poor neighbourhoods.
Abandoned to the heat, cold and damp the photos have begun to discolour and decay. In this condition they too become traces of two historical moments, the first recorded by the photos as images, the second recorded by the photos as fragile material object.
Anonymes - Le Bal Space
Little brown Mushroom
American Suburxb X
(2010, Le Bal Space, Paris - Exhibition Poster)
In addition Found Photos in Detroit may also turn out to be testament to a last moment when such photographic images were actually produced as physical objects.
In the future the discovery of found photographs may well be a matter of recovering them fromn discarded digital hard-drives, CD’s and old computers.
Given the veneration of the amateur image in contemporary culture it is not surprising that photographers and artists have become acutely aware that vernacular snapshot may have a plainspoken immediacy that can be more forceful than their own images (almost any found photo has a degree of enigma and pathos about it, particularly a damaged one).
But there are risks in simply re-presenting found images, abstracting their apparent naivetè into an emotional clichè. Arcara and Santese’s methodical yet speculative assembly of these found photos into subcategories balances the easy sentimentality of each images against the intellectual process of editing and ordering, asking the viewer to consider the greater whole from which each is derived(...)
David Campany
The project Found Photos in Detroit was born from the idea of a reportage concerning the city of Detroit. The project wanted originally to portrait the current abandon and decandence of Detroit, as consequence of the well known socio-economical crisis that hit the city from the middle Seventies. During the first trip, in December 2009, many photos and documents were found close to several decadent public buildings, such as police stations, schools, tribunals and hospitals. This material, even if at that time was just random, revealed immediatly a stunning documentary potential.
(Selected Frames)
At the same time, the primal will of documentation through a reportage faded into a new challenge of reconstructive editing. This material was able to show us that a photo-reportage in Detroit would it meant just an ex post operation, unable to give justice to the developement of the decay: it appeared also clear that a work on the already existing photographic material would have been able to exhibit the phenomen from the inner side.
(FPID Exhibition Wall, Le Bal Space, Paris, 2010)
In Detroit were found many folders containing various documents referable to police archives: not only photos, therefore, but also threatening letters and other types of evidence. Besides this kind of document, nevertheless, were col- lected also photos and files connected with family and daily life.
The collected images are in total 1000 but the first exhibition body of work consists of an editing of 200. The fundamental editing criterion was to con- sider all the materials as they basically are: documents. Doesn’t matter if criminal or civil, public or private. Every single piece is and evidence by itself.
In addition to the 250 images that made the exhibition, hence being edited and framed, the col- lection of rescued material ranges over 800 further photographs, not awarded to be displayed yet. This section of archive have been subsequently scanned, and new sequences of photographs have been arranged for future exhibitions to be held.
(Found Photos in Detroit - Book Cover and Pages - Cesura Publish, 2012)
In 2012 the autors published the Found Photos in Detroit book. The book has collected seven nominations as the best photographic book of the year and was selected by Martin Parr and Garry Badger for the series: Photobook: A History Vol III, which collects the 200 best books after the second world war.
(Photobook: A History Vol III)
The exhibition of the original photographs has been enriched with a selection of 11 enlargements. The choice by the authors to carry out this operation lies in the desire to showcase the material aspects of the images and their wear and tear, and to amplify the power of the images through enlargement.
(Selected Enlargment prints - 105x140cm)