Melancholy Objects

Aestheticization and Representation of the Ruins of Detroit

From the city of industry to the city of ruins, the ironic connotation of Henry Ford’s famous quote ”Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently” is omnipresent. This idea of improving the quality of life in Detroit nowadays is followed by the act of getting involved in the art projects, using ruins as a scenography, and for the photographers, who seem to profit the most from it–using ruins as the main subject: sometimes surreal, sometimes shocking, mourning, even painful, tragic, mysterious, sometimes aggressive, sometimes meaningless, but always obsessively beautiful.

This paper focuses on the nature of architectural ruins in Detroit, comparing them to the ancient ruins, and trying to answer the question of everlasting ruin fascination which is nowadays often called ruinporn. Why do we still have such a big lust for ruins? What emotions ruins provoke in us and how is this aestheticization of misery serving art and design?

Through camera lens, Detroit is presented to us as a complex visual phenomenon. The ruins of Detroit, or preferably, the representation of the ruins of Detroit that attract artists and designers can be seen, in the way Susan Sontag used to evoke photography, as melancholy objects.