“Ruin Porn” and the Ambivalence of Decline: Andrew Moore's Photographs of Detroit

Abstract

Andrew Moore's contemporary photographs of Detroit, MI, are a significant engagement with urban ruins. The images have been developed and displayed in the context of significant national economic and cultural upheavals. The considerable public response to the images at art museums and galleries and in mainstream media publications attests to the photographs' particular resonance among middle-class viewers, who have used the images to articulate interrelated fears about the postindustrial economy, environmental degradation, and poor governance, as well as a growing malaise with respect to the history and prospects of the middle class within US culture. However, some critics have called photographic representation into question as an adequate means for mainstream viewers to reframe their relationships with contemporary urbanity and the attitudes and practices that have contributed to the substantial problems facing urban areas across the country. Moore's sharpest critics have termed his photographs “ruin porn,” and have accused his viewers of failing to do anything more than gaze at Detroit from a safe distance. This article frames Moore's photographs and the discourse around them in their immediate cultural and historical contexts as well as within broader photographic movements and the iconography of ruins. These analyses inform close readings of key images to explore the possibilities of artistic work that helps Detroit appear both as a specific, localized instance of broader cultural tendencies and as an imaginative, speculative terrain for reimagining the practices and attitudes of governments, markets, and social groups.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 19 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.