Having grown up in land of cornfields and the like, I wasn't used to being
surrounded by skyscrapers. Moving to Detroit for the first time in 2001 or
2002, I rode that people mover, winding his way along this track through all
these abandoned beautiful buildings from the 1920s. I was just always amazed
looking around all the details along the top and trim and how could this be
abandoned? What's its story? How did it get to be this way? I kind of started
doing the research and the like and with the research comes maybe taking a peek
inside every once in a while.
You're not a conquistador but you're kind of exploring. People have been
the urban explorers for years but we're out to get the full history of a
building. I feel I need to document these places either before they get
destroyed by humans or the elements renovated or demolished.
We're not trying to exploit anything. The ruin porn slam that we've been
accosted with a couple of times. I mean we're not trying to... Not trying to
glamorize ruins and say, hi it's an abandoned building. We're trying to
look beyond an abandoned building and say it's an architectural significant
building that happens to be vacant or abandoned. Why do people go into these
buildings? One, because they can and they can do it in Detroit. The chances of
getting caught are minimal. I'm not gonna lie. It's coming up a 36 story
abandoned building and being on its roof and looking for miles around. Something
most people are going to do. Breathtaking. Amazing. It's like you're
taken into another world. It seems like a race against time to document these
buildings before many others get in there. If you get in, buildings been open for a
little bit. Things are smashed and destroyed whereas they were intact you
know a few weeks before. You really lose that sense of you know time has been
forgotten and time capsules but more of just like this is someone's playroom you
know.
Somebody's living in there. It's actually a stator. I got very interested in abandoned
buildings about five years ago and I started exclusively shooting decayed
settings and abandoned settings. I really liked the theme of entropy but
also a kind of nosiness about what people who are there inhabiting the
buildings previously, what their lives were like and so it's kind of an
enjoyment in getting to feel like time had stopped and frozen and you get to
wander around in the buildings and peek at things that you don't usually have
access to. I recently moved here from New York. I used to have to spend about three
hours driving outside of the city to get to the buildings and I had been told
that there was a significant amount of decay and wonderful places to see in
Detroit and finally made it out last summer. I went in the buildings and
enjoyed that. There was decay everywhere which fulfilled my need to see this kind
of world.
Got scavengers, got people to rip you off. That's why I told you to be careful up
there. Got people waiting on wings, just waiting for people like you to come.
I got chased in that building before. Yeah, they chased me for a while. I locked
myself in a closet. I had my knife out, my pepper spray ready to go. I'll have you a gun next time.
You can get arrested, you can get arrested, you can get accosted by
scrappers, you can get robbed, you can you can fall through a floor. It's it's
dangerous. I think it's it's important to to you know risk risk it to have a
record future generations. Every once in a while through our website
BillingsInDutrate.com we'll get someone contacting us saying the Grammy
Ballroom is amazing and I want to save it and so it's not just people coming
there for their ruin porn fix. There are a lot of people who are intrigued by the
building and and you're kind of saying here's what's there it's up to you to
maybe make it something else. I think that Urban Exploration is an interesting
hobby but it's a dangerous one and hopefully you go in there and you know
you leave it as you found it and you don't steal things you don't destroy
things you don't tag things because if you destroy something chances are it'll
come down. People made history here this is where they worked and lived in it to
me they're they're sacred places.
