January 2011: I am preparing for my first real visit to Detroit, the city of my birth. I am a Californian, where I have been since age one when my parents packed me into a car to seek fame and fortune in LA. It is strange to be defined by something unknown but when asked if I am a "native" Californian, I answer, "No, I was born in Detroit." It seems time to investigate what that means. So I have come "home" on my birthday to photograph Detroit.

This blog is part of an accompanying journal about the project.

Monday, February 7, 2011

Beginning to Feel a Native Pride

Still going through the photographs I took in Detroit just a couple of weeks ago. Seems so long ago but for a first visit, it seems as if I was just there.

This is a new project and as such competes for now with a schedule that includes my long-term project, FINDING CHINATOWN, photographing in the Chinatowns of the US & Canada, with deadlines for an exhibition looming.

It is a tribute to the complexity and lure of Detroit that, although mentioned in the News Hub blog that I was there to photograph the Chinatowns as well as exploring my own family landmarks, in my first four+ days I never made it to Windsor to photograph their Chinatown and, most significantly I never finished my own personal landmark list for wherever I ventured, there was another story to pursue. The journey is truly just
beginning and I cannot wait to return in the Spring (yes I could return before but hey, I may be native Detroit but in truth I am a Southern Californian and it IS cold there right now).

In the interim, I perked up in the middle of the Super Bowl as I watched the Chrysler commercial and Eminem and that incredible choir to see scenes that are now familiar to me, filled with a pride for a native city that I had not known. There is so much to see.


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