Andrew Moore

Detroit Disassembled

Andrew Moore, Waiting room with snowdrift, Michigan Central Station, 2008
digital chromogenic print scanned from film negative, 57 x 45 in., Collection of Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell

Andrew Moore . Photos: © Andrew Moore . + National Building Museum

For decades the Motor City was America’s icon of prosperity, but Detroit has fallen into an incredible state of dilapidation since the decline of the American auto industry.

Andrew Moore, Abandoned videoconferencing room, Chase Tower, Financial District, 2008
digital chromogenic print scanned from film negative, 27 x 34 in., Collection of Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell

Andrew Moore, Birches growing in decayed books, Detroit Public Schools Book Depository, 2009
digital chromogenic print scanned from film negative, 62 x 97.5 in., Collection of Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell

Andrew Moore, Rolling hall, Ford Motor Company, River Rouge Complex, Dearborn, 2008
digital chromogenic print scanned from film negative, 62 x 78 in., Collection of Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell

Andrew Moore, The Aurora, Brush Park neighborhood, 2008
digital chromogenic print scanned from film negative, 36 x 45.5 in., Collection of Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell

Once America’s fourth largest city, Detroit’s 138 square miles are now one-third empty land dotted with thousands of abandoned structures. Not just humble homes but also grand architectural statements of prosperity and power have been reduced to vacant shells. For generations Americans have gone to Europe to visit its castles and coliseums; now Europeans tour Detroit’s ruins.
In Detroit Disassembled, Andrew Moore reveals the tragic beauty of this unsettled and unsettling territory. Thirty monumentally scaled photographs depict the windowless grand hotels, vast barren factories, collapsing churches, offices carpeted in velvety moss and entire blocks reclaimed by prairie grass. These epic images disclose how the forward march of the assembly line has been thrown spectacularly into reverse in Detroit.