still standin, photo by paulhitz.

The other day I noticed a big spike on one of the most popular posts of all time on Michigan in Pictures, slumpy … the William Livingstone Mansion in Detroit’s Brush Park which tells the story of the fall of this iconic ruin in 2007.

The culprit for this increased traffic was Haunting Images Of Detroit’s Decline by Nicole Hardesty on Huffington Post, a photographic tour of Detroit’s ruins produced in response news that:

…census data indicates Detroit’s population dropped by a startling 25 percent in the last decade, from 951,270 in 2000 to 713,777 last year. That’s a 60 percent decline from its 1950 peak population — 1.85 million — and the lowest count since the 1910 Census put the then-promising Motor City’s population at 285,704.

Definitely shocking numbers, and like many media outlets, they chose to drive the numbers home with pictures of some of the many ruins of the Motor City: United Artists Theater, Michigan Central Station (MCS), the Whitney Building and (of course) Slumpy. The images are drawn from the new photographic book Ruins of Detroit from Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre. The photographs are no doubt gorgeous and there’s no denying that ruin photography provides some powerful commentary on what has happened to Detroit in the last 40 years.

In looking at them, however, I was struck by the thought that seems to always come to mind when I research and write about Slumpy, Michigan Central Station and even the ruin in redevelopment where my office is, the former Traverse City State Hospital. That thought is “Am I adding something positive to the discussion and struggle to redefine Michigan or am I just exploiting the pain behind these ruins?”

There’s two really excellent essays that look at roughly two sides of the ruin porn/ruin photography coin. The first is Detroitism by John Patrick Leary in Guernica Magazine. It’s a probing and critical look at ruin porn that is well worth your consideration that asks “What does ‘ruin porn’ tell us about the Motor City, ourselves, other American cities?” The second is a thoughtful response to Leary’s article On ‘Ruin Porn’ by photographer and historian Ian Ference. Ference takes issue with the assertation that ruin photography cannot help but exploit a city’s misery and takes you through the work of some earlier ruin photographers.

I still don’t know where I come down in this whole debate, but I think that I prefer the work along the lines of Johnny Knoxville to the reporting that he mocks in the opening of his great video about the D. How about you? Add a comment below.

Check this out bigger and in Paul’s My Detroit slideshow.