This article contributes to scholarship on urban visual culture by advancing understandings of how visual imageries may become (online and off-line) sites of confrontation between dominant media perspectives and the lived experiences of urban citizens. Based on participatory photography amongst local residents in Detroit, this article provides transformative insights by contrasting sense makings of Detroiters with dominant media portrayals of a “decaying” city. Residents were asked what images they would use to “see” and represent the city. Photo elicitation interviews revealed interlaced lived experienced and narrated reminiscences of local life and the material urban fabric beyond the prevailing narratives of mere neglect and abandonment. This study develops further knowledge of how photography can simultaneously operate as a critical socio-spatial research subject and an empowering tool for research participants. Through shifting the hegemonic locus of media agents toward residents’ positionalities, findings indicated potentials for redressing the misunderstood spaces of the everyday life of ordinary people.
3 Acres in Detroit, directed/produced by Nora Mandray, is a Web documentary that tells a story about how “facing a brutal Detroit winter, a willful urban farmer sets out to transform an abandoned house into a greenhouse” (http://www.nora-mandray.com/3acresindetroit/), which is part of a DIY Manifesto trilogy: http://www.diy-manifesto.com.
2.
Doucet’s Web page http://www.detroit-matters.com provides further info about his edited volume Why Detroit Matters: Decline, Renewal and Hope in a Divided City (Policy Press, 2017) with further pertinent links, resources, and urban photographs.
Property Praxis (http://blog.propertypraxis.org): This website maps and tracks all properties in the city of Detroit held by speculators. The interactive map, with data from 2015, is searchable by plot or owner; 20% of properties within the city of Detroit are owned by speculators.
AkersJ. (2013a). Decline industry: The market production of Detroit (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Toronto, Ontario, Toronto. Retrieved from https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/handle/1807/70046
8.
AkersJ. (2013b). Making markets: Think tank legislation and private property in Detroit. Urban Geography, 34, 1070-1095.
9.
AkersJ. (2017). A new urban medicine show: On the limits of blight remediation. In DoucetB. (Ed.), Why Detroit matters: Decline, renewal and hope in a divided city (pp. 95-116). Bristol, England: Policy Press.
10.
AndrejevicM. (2002). The work of being watched: Interactive media and the exploitation of self-disclosure. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 19, 230-248.
AustinD. (2014). Lost Detroit: Stories behind the Motor City’s majestic ruins. Charleston, SC: History Press.
13.
AvrahamE. (2000). Cities and their news media images. Cities, 17, 363-370.
14.
BanksM. (2001). Visual methods in social research. London, England: Sage.
15.
BellP. (2001). Content analysis of visual images. In Van LeeuwenT.JewittC. (Eds.), The handbook of visual analysis (pp. 10-34). London, England: Sage.
16.
BolandP. (2008). The construction of images of people and place: Labeling Liverpool and stereotyping Scousers. Cities, 25, 355-369.
17.
BoyerD.HannerzU. (2006). Introduction: Worlds of journalism. Ethnography, 7, 5-17.
18.
BrymanA. (2012). Social research methods. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
19.
CrangM. (1997). Picturing practices: Research through the tourist gaze. Progress in Human Geography, 21, 359-373.
20.
CroninA. (2010). Advertising, commercial spaces and the urban. London, England: Palgrave Macmillan.
21.
DarrochM. (2015). Border scenes. Cultural Studies, 29, 298-325.
22.
DattaA. (2012). Where is the global city? Visual narratives of London amongst East European Migrants. Urban Studies, 49, 1725-1740.
23.
DaviesT. (2013). A visual geography of Chernobyl: Double exposure. International Labor and Working-Class History, 84, 116-139.
24.
De BrantT. (2014). Images of Detroit: Visual representations of the city by the media and its residents (Unpublished master’s thesis). Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands.
25.
De BrantT. (2015). Beyond picturesque decay: Assembling multi-dimensional narratives of Detroit through images [Photo essay]. Bronislaw, 1. Retrieved from http://www.bronislawmag.com/1/tdb_pe_urb.php
26.
De CerteauM. (1984). The practice of everyday life. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
27.
De WaltB.De WaltK. (2002). Participant observation: A guide for fieldworkers. Oxford, England: Altamira Press.
28.
DonaldJ. (1999). Imagining the modern city. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
29.
DoucetB. (2013). Four days in Detroit: A Dutch urban geography field trip to the Motor City. Belgeo, 2, doi:10.4000/belgeo.10835. Retrieved from http://belgeo.revues.org/10835
30.
DoucetB. (Ed.). (2017). Why Detroit matters: Decline, renewal and hope in a divided city. Bristol, England: Policy Press.
DrausP.RoddyJ. (2016). Ghosts, devils, and the undead city: Detroit and the narrative of monstrosity. Space and Culture, 19, 67-79.
33.
EngesserS.ErnstN.EsserF.BüchelF. (2017). Populism and social media: How politicians spread a fragmented ideology. Information, Communication & Society, 20, 1109-1126.
HallmanB.BenbowS. (2007). Family leisure, family photography and zoos: Exploring the emotional geographies of families. Social & Cultural Geography, 8, 871-888.
41.
HapperR. (2015). Abandoned places: 60 stories of places where time has stopped. Glasgow, Scotland: Collins.
42.
HarawayD. (1991). Simians, cyborgs, and women: The reinvention of women. New York, NY: Routledge.
43.
HarimanR.LucaitesJ. (2003). Public identity and collective memory in U.S. iconic photography: The image of “accidental napalm.”Critical Studies in Media Communication, 20, 35-66.
44.
HarrisonB. (2004). Snap happy: Toward a sociology of “everyday” photography. In PoleC. (Ed.), Seeing is believing? Approaches to visual research (pp. 23-39). Bingley, England: Emerald.
45.
HeideggerM. (1962). Being and time (MacquarrieJ.RobinsonE., Trans.). New York, NY: Harper & Row. (Original work published 1927)
HellJ.SchönleA. (Eds.). (2010). Ruins of modernity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
48.
IvesonK. (2013). Cities within the city: Do-it-yourself urbanism and the right to the city. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 37, 941-956.
49.
JanssonA. (2002). The mediatization of consumption: Towards an analytical framework of image culture. Journal of Consumer Culture, 2, 5-31.
50.
KellnerD. (2005). Media culture: Cultural studies, identity and politics between the modern and the post-modern. London, England: Routledge.
51.
KinderK. (2017). Reshaping the gray spaces: Resident self-provisioning and urban form in Detroit. In DoucetB. (Ed.), Why Detroit matters: Decline, renewal and hope in a divided city (pp. 117-134). Bristol, England: Policy Press.
52.
KraftlP. (2009). Living in an artwork: The extraordinary geographies of the Hundertwasser-Haus, 1 Vienna. Cultural Geographies, 16, 111-134.
53.
KreichaufR. (2017). Between economic revival and social disruption: The redevelopment of Greater Downtown and the emergence of new socio-spatial inequalities. In DoucetB. (Ed.), Why Detroit matters: Decline, renewal and hope in a divided city (pp. 75-94). Bristol, England: Policy Press.
54.
KusenbachM. (2003). Street phenomenology: The go-along as ethnographic research tool. Ethnography, 4, 455-485.
55.
Leddy-OwenC. (2014). “I had a hard time actually trying to catch the essence of Englishness”: Participant photography and the racialised construction of place and belonging in a South London suburb. Social & Cultural Geography, 15, 747-768.
56.
LewickaM. (2008). Place attachment, place identity, and place memory: Restoring the forgotten city past. Journal for Environmental Psychology, 28, 209-231.
LynchK. (1960). The image of the city. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
59.
MadanipourA.KnierbeinS.DegrosA. (2013). Public space and the challenges of urban transformation in Europe. London, England: Routledge.
60.
MarchandY.MeffreR. (2011). The ruins of Detroit. London, England: Steidl.
61.
MargolisE. (1999). Class pictures: Representations of race, gender and ability in a century of school photography. Visual Sociology, 14, 7-38.
62.
McIntyreA. (2003). Through the eyes of women: Photovoice and participatory research as tool for reimagining place. Gender, Place and Culture, 10, 47-66.
63.
McRobbieA.ThorntonS. (1995). Rethinking “moral panic” for multi-mediated social worlds. British Journal of Sociology, 46, 559-574.
64.
MillingtonN. (2013). Post-industrial imaginaries: Nature, representation and ruins in Detroit, Michigan. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 31, 279-296.
MitchellW. (2005). What do pictures want? The lives and loves of images. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
67.
MooreA. (2010). Detroit disassembled. Akron, OH: Akron Art Museum.
68.
MooreG.CroxfordB.AdamsM.RefaeeM.CoxT.SharplesS. (2008). The photo-survey research method: Capturing the city. Visual Studies, 23, 50-62.
69.
MoyersB.PellettG. (1990). Consuming images (Bill Moyers documentary from 1990 about the public mind and the media culture). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Rso4QX_VEI
70.
MuzainiH. (2015). On the matter of forgetting and “memory returns.”Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 40, 102-112.
71.
OsborneB. (2002). Locating identity: Landscapes of memory. Choice, 39, 1903-1911.
72.
PhilpD. (2017). Make sure you’re helping: Experts, solidarity and effective partnering with locals. In DoucetB. (Ed.), Why Detroit matters: Decline, renewal and hope in a divided city (pp. 249-258). Bristol, England: Policy Press.
PutnamJ.RosmanA.TeachworthM (2017). The James and Grace Lee Boggs School. In DoucetB. (Ed.), Why Detroit matters: Decline, renewal and hope in a divided city (pp. 321-326). Bristol, England: Policy Press.
75.
RedgraveA. (2013). Motor skills/Les moteurs du changement. EnRoute, April, 45-52.
76.
RenX., (2014). The political economy of urban ruins: Redeveloping Shanghai. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 38, 1081-1091.
77.
RoseG. (1997). Situating knowledges: Positionality, reflexivities and other tactics. Progress in Human Geography, 21, 305-320.
78.
RoseG. (2003). On the need to ask how, exactly, is geography “visual”?Antipode, 35, 212-221.
79.
RoseG. (2010). Doing family photography: The domestic, the public and the politics of sentiment. Farnham, England: Ashgate.
80.
RoseG. (2012). Visual methodologies: An introduction to researching with visual material. London, England: Sage.
81.
SchwartzD. (1989). Visual ethnography: Using photography in qualitative research. Qualitative Sociology, 12, 119-154.
82.
SchwartzR.HalegouaG. (2015). The spatial self: Location-based identity performance on social media. New Media & Society, 17, 1643-1660.
83.
SeidmanI. (2013). Interviewing as qualitative research: A guide for researchers in education and the social sciences. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
84.
SharoffR.ZbarenW. (2005). American city: Detroit architecture, 1845-2005. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press.
85.
SojaE. (1996). Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and other real-and-imagined places. Oxford, England: Blackwell.
86.
SonnC.QuayleA.KasatP. (2015). Picturing the Wheatbelt: Exploring and expressing place identity through photography. American Journal of Community Psychology, 55, 89-101.
87.
SontagS. (1977). On photography. London, England: Penguin Books.
88.
SteinmetzG., (2009). Detroit: A tale of two crises. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 27, 761-770.
89.
SugrueT. (2013). The origins of the urban crisis: Race and inequality in postwar Detroit. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
VergaraJ. (1999). American ruins. New York, NY: Monacelli Press.
92.
WangC. (2006). Youth participation in photovoice as a strategy for community change. Journal of Community Practice, 14, 147-161.
93.
WilliamsJ. (2017). Reawakening culture among Detroit’s resident majority. In DoucetB. (Ed.), Why Detroit matters: Decline, renewal and hope in a divided city (pp. 233-248). Bristol, England: Policy Press.
94.
YinR. (2014). Case study research design and methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
95.
ZebrackiM. (2012). Engaging geographies of public art: Indwellers, the “Butt Plug Gnome” and their locale. Social & Cultural Geography, 13, 735-758.
96.
ZebrackiM. (2018a). Regenerating a coastal town through art: Dismaland and the (l)imitations of antagonistic art practice in the city. Cities, 77, 21-32. doi:10.1016/j.cities.2017.04.015
97.
ZebrackiM. (2018b). Urban preservation and the queerying spaces of (un) remembering: Memorial landscapes of the Miami Beach Art Deco Historic District. Urban Studies, 55, 2261-2285. doi:10.1177/0042098017709197
98.
ZimmermannS. (2007). Media geographies: Always part of the game. Aether: The Journal of Media Geography, 1, 59-62.
