A retrospective survey of Bruce Harkness's striking social
documentary photographs and an invaluable historical record that
bears witness to irrevocably lost swaths of Detroit's social and
urban fabric. In 1980, the cities of Detroit and Hamtramck,
Michigan, exercised eminent domain to develop nearly five hundred
acres of land for a new industrial park and General Motors assembly
plant. But the land was not vacant. Some thirty-five hundred people
lived there in Poletown--some of them for their entire lives. They
attended neighborhood schools and churches, worked for and
patronized small businesses, walked the sidewalks, drove the
streets, and tended to lawns and gardens. Harkness began
photographing the area in February 1981. He recorded street scenes,
intersections, panoramic views, homes, businesses, churches, and
people. Ten months, ninety visits, and six hundred photographs
later, it all disappeared forever. The Poletown series established
Harkness as a major Detroit documentarian. It came on the heels of
late-1970s projects located in and around the city's skid row: Cass
Corridor. The images include gritty streetscapes, a portrait series
depicting residents living in a crumbling apartment building, and
the lively cultural milieu of a local gay and transgender bar. Most
of this old portion of inner-city Detroit since has been supplanted
by urban redevelopment and gentrification. During the late 1980s,
Harkness collaborated with urban historian John J. Bukowczyk on a
major documentary project, Urban Interiors. While the Poletown
project had documented the exteriors of buildings and streetscapes
on Detroit's East Side, Urban Interiors captured the insides of
inner-city Detroit homes and businesses and included extended oral
history interviews. While Harkness has always found human dignity
and resilience in his subjects, the tone of his work brightened in
the 1990s alongside Detroit's revival. Photographs from this era
include blues musicians performing in clubs and at outdoor concerts
and the distinctive, robust youth culture that flourished in
Dearborn's now-defunct Zone Coffee House. Featuring images from
these and other projects, Photographs from Detroit, 1975-2019
includes Harkness's extensive notes, which describe and
contextualize the encounters he shared with the people and places
he photographed, and offer insight into his working methods and
equipment. The volume and quality of Harkness's work merits him
recognition as one of Detroit's most important documentary
photographers during this pivotal, transitional era in the city's
history. Harkness's images depict the struggles and resilience of
ordinary individuals and families in working-class communities who
together have indelibly shaped the spirit of Detroit. This book is
a must-have for Detroiters past and present as well as historians,
anthropologists, social documentary advocates, and photobook
collectors everywhere.
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