Pray for this man who just emailed me and know the He who began a good works in you will complete those works. Meaning God is moving in your ministry while you believe it or not.
…I just visited your site and I am touched by your love and faith for Christ. Recently and over a period of several years, my family and I have gone through some pretty amazing trials, two of our children had serious problems with depression and drugs, we had to have our teenage son locked up for 18 months, my wife had cancer, I had to close my business of over 20 years, and we lost our home. All I can say is that it has only been through my faith in Christ and my surrendering continually to Him that He has sustained my family and myself, and has kept me sane as I nearly lost that too.
In 1992, while I was taking a shower I had a powerful vision of ‘who’ Jesus is that forever changed my relationship and walk with him…..
My Response
…. Nothing I have is my own. Praise the lord for your faith and testimony. Thank you for your email. If the crediting of my video leads people to the lord then place it on the site. Your email came at a great time in my life as the lord is moving and you are witness to that. You have felt great pain as life unfolded un-according to your plans. Job lost it all and praised god but that isn’t to say how strong job was but how strong god is. Later as you know job received twice as much or even more. Although you might not receive your reward for your faith in this life you will receive it in heaven. We soon shall join him at the throne. The devil has no power though there is darkness in my skin. The grace of god has freed us from the law of sin and the mosaic law through Jesus. The lord does not work in our understanding of time and saves our spirit for his kingdom while we are here. I don’t understand heaven but I believe it is there. I would be humbled to the point of death if I glimpsed at what is to come (for us who love Jesus). In my struggles I have begun praising god for those struggles I’m in. Like serving and loving our enemies I have, under the lords strength, begun to do so when considering my trials. All things can be used for the greater good for those who love Jesus. (Romans 8:28) Surrender to him like you told me about and I will do the same, encouraged by your faith. I have not been through what you have. I consider you in a place where you, like Paul, can boast in what you’ve been through because you have the ability through gods strength to claim Christ as your victory. Rescue is coming. We have already won. Don’t try and make sense of it all like there is an equation to be figured out. Christ is moving and it will look different. Again thank you for your email. I’m not sure what site you visited, my blog? All I have written you I pray for the same in my life and the lives of all the saints. Stephen
Christ is the good that is found in me, not my attempts to do right, correct what I find wrong or even correct what I think Jesus finds wrong.
Incomplete with trials in my life revolving around simply feeling inadequate to serve God, I began to study the scriptures, sometimes standing up and sometimes sitting down, to find the symbiotic relationship between Faith and Works. In doing so I became impatient by the scriptures I read and hastened my need to look for work for my faith as I felt I was not doing enough. I asked my wise friend Amos, whom God works constantly through in love and service, “What must I work in to show my faith”.
“IF you have true faith then you will have works” he replied and we discussed further about trusting God.
I thought longer about a works based faith and how it differed than faith based works. While on assignment for the Wall Street Journal I listened to a pastor ask members of his community while he handed out a turkey meal to them why they think God was going to let them into heaven.
Each person answered “because I am a good person and I believe in Jesus”. Some said I am mostly a good person, some stated I used to be worse. The pastor at Mack Ave and I discussed how we were surprised that so many people had a faith that did not declare that we were fallen and Christ was the good, which is what the bible preaches. The correct answer we both believe Jesus was preaching was that you can not be good enough to get into heaven, but believe in me and you will enter.
Jesus also clearly says that we will have to give an account of what we have done on this world when we die and come to him. It also clearly says in the bible that anything we do apart from God will fade away. Lastly the Bible clearly states that God has work for us to do. So, putting that together, the only offering we will be able to show Jesus are to see if the works he had planned for us were done by us. That to me takes a lot of pressure off of my insane drive to succeed, commonly fueled when not thinking in the Spirit by impatience and comparison, and become the best that I can become for my self.
For long now I can relate less with the fact that Jesus makes us white as snow as he separates us from our sins and more to the separation I have from God because of the natural filth and distance that comes with guilt and making everything right until you are always the reason things anything goes wrong.
I am not one for study books, however, Amos gave me a book called Gospel Transformation. It has blown my mind as it has equipped me. I was on a daily self examination for about 4 months when I left for Ukraine and did not bring the book with me. In Ukraine my fellow voyagers called me Pastor as the words and love of the Lord flowed from me by his strength. Three months later I have barely done a page but tonight I got back into it. The page was on evaluating the meanings of Flesh in key scriptures.
In this brief study I found my answer to the relationship between works and faith. In the Mosaic Law a list of what was good was constantly studied but due to mans fallen status, simply living in the flesh caused the Law not to carry the power to free a man from sin. What the Law could not do, God sent his son Jesus to be an offering so that through his death we, sinners, can have life and life, freedom, in the truest sense.
My freedom is Christ at work in me. I can not go by my personal list or conscience of what is good for me or others OR my personal list or conscience of what is good for my faith. I must rely totally on the Spirit, whom Jesus sent as a counselor, to reveal to us what God wants us to do. IT is a popular Christianese term to say something like, “Well I don’t believe that God is going to say to you each step you take and when to take it.” In defense to our, my, fallen nature, I agree and I believe God does in the way of the Spirit guiding us which most of all of us take for granted as our own sightless barely guided “but in faith” steps. Which actually are very guided and very planned, if you are one whom God calls Righteous.
Don’t push people away because of their uninvolved life with Christ for it is most likely your impatience that fuels your disgusted, seemingly betrayed notion and feeling that you should be at a distance. Any righteousness in your life is not because of you so lower yourself and serve your out of the faith by choice friends just as much or more than your in the faith friends alike. Doing so will prove to yourself and to God that you don’t serve according to whom you favor but you serve according to whom Jesus died for; sinners. It is not you that searches but the Spirit in you.
A huge cargo ship is silently creeping down the Detroit river. It looks like a hotel just drifting by with the 5 stories of lights.
You know each person searching after you. You know their steps because they are following in yours. Each person who is weary or downhearted, strengthen them. Step towards judgment, step towards peace. Insert title but see what a world can’t.
Two Masters? It is hard to narrow all that I serve to less than 9 so please Lord lessen me the 8 but with mercy and grace.
Alone I find you, my head toward heaven
looking towards others are the needs you prompt me to bare in burden.
If my voice may be heard across the world, will you carry it a message of yours alone.
The Lord knows how to rescue righteous men from their trials. So pursue righteousness asking the Holy Spirit to carry you. Do not try on your own accord but ask God to reveal impure motives even while pursuing his kingdom.
As for evangelism, don’t wait any longer, the time is now to tell the person you are praying for the good news. I was with a very amazing person today who was on drugs and living apart from God. Someone during his college career asked him if he had heard the Good news. My friend said, “What good news?” The response was Jesus is coming back.
What moment are you waiting for? Consider this the prompting from the spirit as I do not write these words on my own or by my own desire, although by God’s grace and power I can say I share the desire that you would go and tell the world of your faith. But again, not on your own accord or strength. Not sure what that means? Ask the lord, and humble yourself. Ask him to point out what is keeping you from the fullness of christ’s love.
If you have Christ’s love you will not need to wait for a ministry opportunity to minister but in love your ministry will perfect.
With bank accounts more than empty caused by lavish hotel rooms and equal meals to suite any price range of suite, coffee twice a day and a San Francisco bay, travel expenses ate just as well for my three week shoot to China and now in this fall chill, -zero is forecasting the unpaid bill from not yet paid recent jobs will soon eat too. Recently home, I sit on the floor near my cat’s food box, empty, ripping up bread for her to eat, along with me. Neither of us have any money to buy the other anything of editable value so we feast like beggars on the streets of Paris, on a four course meal of the handout sourdough bread from Le’Gagnavalon. The granite rose, charcoal and tan stones that make up my kitchen’s floor help the Français de l’humeur.
I realized today that it could be likely that by chance I will never have a separation between social life and what others have called my passion. And that makes life a bit easier to navigate and I think that is so because instead of dividing which parts of existence go where and more importantly to some, when, everything seems to go together as it fits together. As it fits together, planned by the Hymn.
It is 530 am and simultaneously 5 videos in full 1440×1080 hd push a little blew bar of status as they upload fresh from the export chambers that rest in the depths of a late night fcp edit session. The videos will be seen by Congress week. Mr. Z.P, Genious Esquire was beside me, making my evening as a perfect assistant would, from 8 pm to 520 am helping any way he could. The original Pink Panther film played as the night went on.
5 Videos exported in two resolutions, color toned with audio fixed, all of that done today.
6am. Time for sleep, for just a little while.
Angelic chimes ping at seemingly random only narrate the joy of the completed movie files uploading to the internet.
A week of hard work can teach you that even a cat can get full on crumbs of simplicity and bread.
It has been proven to me that I am protected by God’s grace. In Ukraine my cell phone was stolen and I did not fret. 2 hours later the criminal “felt bad” and sought me out and returned it. Two days ago my computer was stolen out of my hotel room without me knowing it. I left at 10 am and the criminal came in while the cleaning lady was present, stated he was me and took my computer and my passport. My entire Chinese project was on this computer. I received a call from the police saying that they had my computer, and that they had the criminal too. I said, “Why?” I did not freak out, at all. I had no even thought that i needed to stay calm. Two hours later after the criminal took my computer he was caught trespassing in another hotel trying to sell the computer. Two hours later. Without me even knowing it was taken and returned. I did not get to meet either criminal. As I left the SF police station I told the policeman to tell the criminal that I forgave him and wasn’t angry but wanted him to know that God loved him.
I can not answer why God’s protection and provision looks like it does or when it works or how to obtain it. I can proclaim though that it is active without our effort or participation more often than some would like to think and it is most relevant to our understanding and noticeable in our ways when out into the world we, our soul steps and in the will of God then we, our soul found.
Jesus is the least of these so what am I to me? What are my possessions or my purpose? If I am passing prophets (without the time to talk for they are good without me) for the purpose of the Lords will in my life, than not only do I mimic the zealousness of the early disciples who wouldn’t give time to the poor asking for Jesus’ healing, but I make given plans more important than given purpose.
Don’t be frightened, dont be scared, this calling is for you.
At Grace Cathedral in San Francisco I began to write this message and I was reminded of two stories as my eyes closed, present, and open to the sounds of the youth choir i used to sing in echoing against the stone pillars. The youth choir live in between peaks falsetto and the troughs of the pipe organ. Two stories about two friends I have met in my travels where God’s protection was present but did not look as “successful” as a returned cell phone or computer.
I am reminded that I have met others whose life in faith has shown protection that looked different. There were Elijah and Isaiah. My friend Elijah in Uganda saw his father get assassinated before presidential elections as a 13 year old. In the following minutes his family was killed as he ran into the jungle. His father was the rebel leader who overthrew Abote. For three days Elijah hid in dead bodies left in a pile in his town. When he got up he was taken into custody by child soldiers and fought with them for five years. An uncle recognized him and bought him out of that army. Two years later after being saved in flesh he was saved in spirit and is now pastoring in Kampala.
Isaiah, a pastor in Angola who was teaching both sides of the war about the Lord, sent his family to the market along his routine route one day so he could finish some activity during the war in 2002. That day someone had placed explosives in the road to assassinate Isaiah. The family didn’t come home and that day Isaiah had to pick up his family with the help of my other friend.
Mark 5 has been my “status” inside along with Romans and God’s personal gifting of vision and purpose. Friends, the Lord has revealed to me something, not more than words can say, actually not words at all, but he has revealed to me an attitude of heart. There aren’t words with the attitude of heart.
We can’t expect to hold the knowledge of who needs Jesus. As the disciples were blinded by the mission of Jesus when the two blind men asked for help I am blinded when I relate the troughs and peaks with my strengths and my weak. If you weigh measures of the Lord in possibility, then you leave yourself with room for doubt. Possibility doesn’t prove existence. God’s love can’t be replicated. Prepare to be interrupted by the Lord while on the road to the Lord’s work.
I don’t currently own a working or complete pair of flip flops.
Welcome to my blog. I am a filmmaker and photographer. I currently have a head ache. I love Detroit, and well, now that my video is out, many Detroiter’s have expressed that they don’t love me or my video. Most people consider word choice more than meaning. Too few actually acquire the freedom to photograph. To photograph what comes along the way is to be living with a camera in hand. What am I but just another chamber of Detroit’s orchestra. In my city, Shooting only adds to the music. Passing prophets for your purpose makes your works more than your meaning.
When you find your name on Michael Moore’s homepage, that is when you know you have done something polar. The Wall Street Journal purchased my content and my story on a dump truck that was hanging forever out of a fourth floor window at the Packard Plant and ran it front page in today’s paper. An editor told me it was the first time ever a photographer had pitched a story to the WSJ that they ran. I am interested in telling my side of the story.
I just returned from doing a film series in China on the renewable energy sector to show to Congress/the Obama administration when I learned that this story was actually going to be in the WSJ. Not only in, but on the front page. If I didn’t have to edit all day tomorrow, I would tell you more about China, More about how I got to the actually film/photograph this dump truck event, and how my laptop with all my china work on it was stolen in SF today, only to be returned in 2 hours. Maybe more tomorrow.
The police took my camera and erased an approx 15-20 images, none of which I believe could have been viewed as negative towards the police. I have 12 images left and 2 videos. here are some of the images and the story. This story is a work in progress and will be updated as I have time. look to the comments for how advice was given by more veteran pros. I did not write all of this to complain but to inform others about how i was treated and more so as a news piece about what happened to these kids. They are the ones I really care about.
A newspaper in Hamtramck is doing a story on this and asked me for a reaction to the police response to my story. Here is what the police said not verbatim, “The camera was left in the car and we asked whose camera it was and the journalist said it was his and the other kids said it was theirs so we took it.” Which is not what happened. The video with the arab kids ends with me leaving the car with my camera. I have the rest of the 10 minutes of footage on my computer which ends with the police driving with the camera on in the car. Read more under the video.
I am reviewing this legal form to see what my rights are. http://www.krages.com/phoright.htm
Female student hiding and crying, in an ally way looking towards the street where the police were spraying, talking on phone.
done
Arab kids taunt police and later are detained. There are 10 more minutes in the video of the police ride that is not shown in this film. The camera was still recording which was not my objective as the police officer drove the kids to station. In the video at 1:03 there is a moment when the police car arrives by the kids and I take a photo while in video mode. If you click the shutter release button while recording video with the Canon 5d Mark II the video will pause while the camera records the image. A shutter will sound too. I do not have this moment when I clicked the shutter. I should have a photograph of that moment, but the police erased it. Neighbors who watched this scene that I was in said that the police had sprayed all races equally and did not subject one more than another to the mace or interrogation.
done
Black students walking away from fight talk about the fights. Two of them didn’t want to be on camera but were ok audio taping. So I took frame grabs just for visual reference.
Hamtramck is a city within the city of Detroit and has 26 nations living in a very small area of two miles by two miles. It was a Polish majority to the point that Pope John Paul stopped by in his trip to America. It is now a very dynamic town with many immigrants that I kind of see could resemble an early Ellis Island. I was at my church in Hamtramck and saw a fight forming across the street near the high school. (photo example-erased)
I ran with my camera to photograph. There was a large group of Arab kids walking in a very tight group, maybe 50 of them in total. I photographed that from afar (photo erased) and watched the police trail the group of kids away through side streets. I walked through some alleys and jumped a random fence after taking the photos shown above of the kids running. I interviewed a few black students walking away form the fight and then walked towards the police controlled intersection. I found a group of about 15 Arab (sorry for the generalization) students who had been maced. I introduced myself and told them who I had shot for in the past. The group of Arab kids were taunting the police officers before I arrived with curse words and yelling, and eventually the cops came by and sprayed us down with mace. The kids kept on saying one of my clients that I mentioned. The kids ran away when the cops came. The group split and some ran back to my position. The cops came over and sprayed the area again. I went in the car with the kids to follow the story but more to escape the crazy amount of mace in the air. The car hadn’t moved and the cops came up and got us out of the car. They took my camera immediately after I told them I was a photographer. I was told to have my hands on the trunk. We were there for what seemed like 30 minutes as the cops yelled at the kids about respect and tried to cross interrogate them. I told them that I was a freelancer they asked me who I had shot for and I told them. They then asked well if you shoot for them (citing examples of organizations i gave him) why don’t you have credentials? I told them as a freelancer I didn’t have credentials. I wasn’t carrying my NPPA card. Come to think of it I don’t think i have received that yet. The cop then told me that I need to get another day job if all i did was follow kids causing fights. I don’t think I will cite examples of whom I have worked next time I am asked in this type of situation. It was used more against me than I could have thought of.
I understand now that the choice to get into the car was not a wise one when the cops were around. Like I said, I thought it was the best choice at the time. My hands were on car on the account that I was “guilty by association”. I don’t that that is a law. I wanted to ask, “Aren’t I innocent until proven guilty by association?” But I didn’t.
On the way to pick up my camera an hour later I ran into the mayor, the former chief of police and the superintendent campaigning in the streets. I did not know who they were when I asked them for directions. I told them my story and the mayor called the police without me asking her for the release of my camera. The former chief of police asked me my thoughts on how the police handled the situation and I told him my thoughts that were not negative. Then the superintendent asked me my thoughts and I told her that we live in a broken world that needs fixing.
I biked to get my camera at the police office. When I arrived the police officer behind the desk, who was not at the original scene, tried to reprimand me. He told me my 1st amendment rights were “Canceled” when I didn’t leave the scene when the cops told me to. Well the cops didn’t tell me to. “Its like calling fire in a crowded theater”, the police officer behind the counter said.
They gave me back my camera after 20 minutes. I biked to my church to continue a film I was making for my church. Turned on my camera and the screen popped up, “No Card”. I was like, “What the junk?” The cops had taken my card. The cops gave me the camera without the memory card in the camera. I should have checked at the station. I biked back and they said they didn’t know where it was and couldn’t find the memory card even though it had been there a few minutes ago with only a few police in the building. The main police officer behind the desk that I was working with couldn’t believe that someone had taken out the card after he, who was in charge, looked at the images. He was called into the back with a whisper from the police officer who originally took my camera. I did not see whom actually whispered but I assume it because he is the one who went into the back of the station to look for the card. Many times he repeated that he had no idea how to open the memory card compartment to take out a memory card. In his words, “I have no idea how to work them things.”
About 20 minutes later they said they found it in a cops pocket who was driving home to a suburb. The officer behind the counter said it had been taken out of my camera in a mix up between shifts and that the officer with the memory card was on his way back and that he would arrive in 20 minutes. I found it quite strange that possible “supporting evidence” was in an off duty officers’ pocket on the way to his home. 1.5 hours later the police officer who originally took my camera, told me to get another day job, told me i was guilty by association, met me at my church down the road and handed me my card and said it was all his fault. I told him I forgave him. I reviewed the card to find the images of police and some of the arab kids had been erased and those images couldn’t be recovered by a software program. I am assuming that the police did not erase my 2 movies because they saw the first frame of the movie as a bad photograph.
Image cropped significantly to show a point in a scene when the cops sprayed mace on students near teachers.
Habib taunts the police because he and the other Arab kids in this crowd felt the police were racist. Later after I was released, the neighbors said the boys taunted too much. One neighbor commented that the cops were not spraying one race more than another.
There was a fight between the black students and the arab students at the high school in Hamtramck last year that i was told was about 150 vs 150 students. In another fight over a bike, I tried to break it up by talking calmly between the two cultures and that time, love prevailed.
but for now, i am so frustrated because of the police stories not matching up about my memory card and since the images were erased without them telling me, I felt lied to. The most frustrating part is I am trying to tell stories that will change people. The more I am cut down by those who don’t want the truth to be told, the stronger the desire to fight for the provision and documentation of truth becomes in my heart.
I believe the police did what they thought was best at the time. It was very aggressive atmosphere. I did not ever lose my temper or raise my voice. I could understand why they took my camera, why my hands were on the trunk, why I was asked questions. I can not understand why they erased images and can not understand a few others things.
Personal thoughts; About my faith, I will say that it was strengthened today. God’s plans are bigger than me, bigger than my plans. The images are gone and I am safe. The way that things went down at the police station it seemed very likely that the police made a story up in front of me about where the card was. The fact remains that there are children tomorrow who feel they need to find security in their appearance and their status and that the eye for an eye judgment system is the main determining factor to fight or not to fight. I have not covered any wars and have only had my life threatened twice before. I have only been maced twice before. The scene wasn’t that crazy, it was more unexpected. It is my goal with truth and integrity to creatively achieve engaging storytelling.
Thank you to all journalists who have emailed me with advice for next time. I consider my work at the professional level, always allowing room for education to better my craft. Welcome photographers from http://pressefotografforbundet.dk/. Thank you for your interest in this story.
Journalists-Spread the truth.
frame grab of cops taking a young arab kid into the police car.
I unfortunately wrote over the card because I was on deadline for another assignment and had to use the card. I did not use much of the 16gb card but later went back and tried to recover the files and they were already written over. Everything happened really fast and it was a very tough decision but I had to use the card. Recovering the files through software did not occur to me quick enough.
from the National Press Photographers Association..
My understanding (and again, you want a lawyer to give you proper legal advice relating to your situation) If police take someone into custody, they have a right to take a camera for safekeeping. There may also be limited rights if they had probable cause to believe that it had evidence of a crime. But they do not, under any circumstances, have a right to delete images, or to demand the deletion of images. In fact, that could be viewed as destroying evidence. Destroying evidence can lead to a presumption against the party that destroyed the evidence.
In fact, you might find out if any of the kids were arrested. If so, be sure to tell their lawyers that the police deleted images which may have contained evidence that would prove or disprove wrongdoing. Having their case affected is the primary way that police officers are encouraged to stay in line.
You should also consider filing a complaint with the police department. They might not have a policy relating to handling of cameras and digital images. If they don’t, this incident is evidence that one is needed. Use your connections with the mayor and others to encourage such a policy.
The list of my images with images missing. I did not do any in the field editing. The images should have started around 3110 and gone up to around 3140.
My friend Jackie Victor and I were talking about major media being in town to cover Detroit. I was at my usual spot, Avalon, discussing that most stories being told were actually just being retold. The packard plant being on the cover of a major magazine addressing Detroit was the example we both agreed not the best choice from a Detroiters’ perspective for a cover shot that should have been different.
So what story isn’t being told? I’m 22,000 images into a photo/video documentary in my search for who detroit is. My hope with this letter is to ask the detroiters themselves to help me by opening their lives. (thank you to those who have volunteered so far).
Please read this blog post and help me find the stories to tell. from bar mitzvah to mosques, car lovers to the unemployed, young and successful to a hip hop artist. My goal is 70 day-in-the-life photo stories with video and written components in the next 12 months.
My mom just wrote to me this after she read this desire to photograph Detroit, “My prayer is that you will look to those who are doing good in Detroit, to those who are living productive lives in Detroit, to those who are in love and making their way in Detroit. Look to the sprouting seeds, the seeds of new life.” I hope the same thing mom. Continuing…
As Detroiter who travels the world working on photo/video assignments, I have now turned my focus to cover Detroit for the next year. And I am going to rely fully on stories from Detroiters focusing most of storytelling through photography. For 7 of the next 12 months, I want to document the city of Detroit in depth using both photographs and video to create a traveling photography exhibition and feature length film. With letters from the Detroit citizens in the exhibit this will finally be a visual example of our city that doesn’t mock or attack, but just documents the life of the people. I want to live with you and document what you do. Sounds strange but that is how the best photographs come from and is where the spirit of Detroit can be found.
In the city that modernized the industrial line giving jobs to tens of thousands of immigrants and American citizens alike I ask how can the American Dream still exist for the citizens of a city that is not only mocked for it’s existence but on the fridge of bankruptcy. If you have a detroit moment coming up that I should photograph, or a story that I should interview you about, please contact me and you can be part of something huge.
As a Detroit citizen by choice, I have throughout the past three years, photographed and filmed the daily life happening around me in Detroit. From refrigerators flying out of high apartments windows to shootings to a 6th grade ceremony for Obama’s inauguration. I, with many of the new young homeowners in this city, share an optimism and see the potential in the shell of this former great American icon. The optimism is not seen easily nor can it be reached by simply driving around viewing the many insecurities like attractions that encompass Detroit.
The focus will include a study on quality of life, the basic human rights that being met or not met and the definition of community in the terms of local and world view. Detroit was made, remade and unmade by the automobile industry over the course of the twentieth century creating within its city limits a human geography of race, class and power unique in America. Amidst the constant negative news coverage and the doom and gloom of the 2008 and
2009 economic crisis, many Detroiters remain optimistic of another rebirth for their city. Holding on to what citizens in other cities might take for granted, Detroiters share a strong sense of pride in their
common luxuries like the corner grocery store, cafe or church. Detroit is a city whose boundaries are known, its history is written, its current status is unknown, its budgets, rhetoric and problems has been placed for the world to see (and mock) and its murder rate at an all time high. Yet, with all
of that, I have found that individuals who are drawn to this city invest with a hope of being part of the change that is inevitable in thought and hope. But with each investment comes the high possibility of failing if the investment isn’t timed correctly.
I still don’t believe that Detroit has been written about in the popular media in the way that makes Detroiters proud and at the same time educates others. Over the past 5 months the city I have lived in for 3 years now has been swarming with foreign correspondents trying to get their story’s edge on a city that has been around for awhile. I say swarming because their are not too many of us freelancers here and it is easy to spot an outsider. With most of the auto reporting being done from outside the city limits of Detroit I want to focus inside this great American icon that helped build America into the country it is today.
“There is so much unknown” a local mid-50s white male architect said during one of Detroit’s only fashion shows I photographed in the past year at the Detroit Artists Market. “Which is why I stay,” he finished. Here in Detroit I am a difference. I, like the cars that make up most of America today, am an import. I have driven slowly to enjoy what I see and have come from trips
abroad and have had to breathe slowly just to remember why I remain here. Each hopeful Detroiter goes through their own recessions of doubt with the lure of another state’s common luxuries beckoning. Much more than my desire to photograph and film my city is the desire for the inhabitants of
Detroit to have a voice of their own. As a Detroiter I want with the Guggenheim grant to give that voice and with that voice I think many outsiders will begin to think differently about how they not only
respond to the reports from popular media but how they look at their own communities to find that place is more than buildings, but are people.
“People don’t want to know about the good in Detroit”, one news editor told me. From my windows of an American built house and American built car I notice the light in the city, the possibility, the citizens in the city left for dead. I continue to call Detroit my home even with all my travel to 28 different countries. I have lived everywhere people want to live; California, Las Vegas, Washington DC, Italy. The difference is that I am a difference here. Not in a way prideful or bold, but in a way that by echoing the determination of the
few, in a way where I am accepted by other citizens instantly as a part of something larger, in a way that every single person in this community can be which is by taking advantage of the possibility to make a change here by being the change. Conversation first. Investment second. It is not that I look past the hurt, it is that I, we, Detroiters, know that the past, pain, and failing industry exists and we count it as blocks for
building.
It seems to most of the citizens of Detroit that the world doesn’t want Detroit to succeed. For many of the young working class the day will come when the world finds Detroit as a center for possibility. In this transition to despair or success, there needs to be a proper documentation of what Detroit is now. “Detroit always finds itself” a subject of mine said in an interview. Until financial stability comes the citizens of Detroit must hold on to what remains with or without the economy… hope.
even in the midst of creation, God knew on the 7th day he would rest. Even more so, God knew that you would be where you are now. Have confidence that even though you don’t have everything planned. He does.
