Design
Tracking 25 Years of Rebirth and Ruin in Detroit
Camilo Jose Vergara reflects on what he’s learned from photographing the city since the early ‘90s.
Camilo Jose Vergara has been photographing America’s urban ruins since arriving from Chile in the late 1960s. But one city captures his attention in a way the others can’t.
The trained sociologist began visiting Detroit in 1991, lured in by the city's mythologized past and shocking scale of decline. Guided by a local newspaper’s blight survey, Vergara began documenting the city's most neglected areas. He’s been going back one week a year since to keep track of the changes.