Detroit 1968 – Photographs by Enrico Natali, edited by Jane Brown
I’m so happy to report that my BFF Jane Brown, VP/Accounts Director at D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, is the editor of a just released, stunning book of photographs by Enrico Natali: Detroit 1968. For the past few years, Jane’s been near breathlessness talking about visiting Natali at his home in Ojai and finding his treasure trove of photographs of Detroit. And now, looking at this book, I understand her enthusiasm. These photos speak volumes, not just about a powerful city before its fall, but looking at them now with hindsight, about complacency and contemporary life in every American city. In his introduction, Mark Binelli writes “Detroit 1968 resounds as sharply as Moscow 1918, Berlin 1990, or Baghdad 2004 – the year Everything Changed.” Huge congratulations to Jane for publishing these extraordinary photos so we can take another look.
Enrico Natali’s Detroit 1968 is an extraordinary body of photographic work that was originally published in 1972 (under the title New American People). Throughout this pivotal moment, Enrico Natali emphatically documented Detroit, its people and their environments, and their lives and conditions in his compelling photographs.
Forty-one years later, Natali’s photographs of Detroit still resonate with hope and emotion, and indeed have taken on an added pathos. These pictures capture the relative calm before the storm: people attending art exhibitions, sporting events, a high school prom; families posing together for portraits; secretaries smoking their afternoon cigarettes; children, parents and grandparents, workers of every stripe—machinists, waitresses, beauticians—plying their trades with what might be described in retrospect as innocence. The spirits of these nameless faces, young and old, are the ghosts that haunt what is now—very literally—this bankrupt metropolis.
The book is on sale now and there is a reception with Enrico Natali at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit on Friday, November 22 at 7pm. Information about that free event, here.
