ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 considers photography of Detroit’s ‘abandoned spaces’, images that are often considered nostalgic in affect. It focuses on the work of four particular photographers, but pays attention also to the wider popularity of ‘abandoned spaces’ imagery. The chapter explores existing criticisms and defences of these photographic projects of the once great motor city, and asks: Is this photography nothing more than ‘ruin porn’, subsisting on a nostalgia for Detroit’s prosperous Ford-era past? Is it a romanticisation and aestheticisation of poverty by out-of-towners who do not have to live with it? Or can critical and utopian possibility be read in this prolific imagery of industrial abandonment? It will conclude by offering a Blochian reading that overcomes problems faced even by existing Benjamin-inspired readings of this kind of photography.
