The Book Depository Photographs

One of my photographs is featured on page 19 of the May 2008 issue of Harper's Magazine. This is a tremendous honor, particularly given how much I respect this magazine. The photograph chosen by the Harper's editors is one of many I have shot at the heavily-looted and rummaged-through Detroit Public Schools Book Depository, known more simply as the Roosevelt Warehouse here in Detroit. If you are arriving here from Harper's and might be interested in viewing more photographs, you should check out my Detroit Public Schools Book Depository/Roosevelt Warehouse Flickr Set with over sixty photographs of the location, or this flash-photo slideshow I set up to allow viewing of larger-resolution photos.

I believe the photo came to the attention of the Harper's editors after this photograph and this post (a meditation on modern ruins and the book depository) were featured on hundreds of websites, including the major Web 2.0 social media sites fark, metafilter, digg, reddit, and boingboing back in January. Since that happened, I have had the opportunity to conduct some research and talk to a lot of people about the warehouse. I am going to be writing another post this week that I hope will clear up a bit of the mystery created by the photographs. Almost everyone who sees them has to ask "How did this happen?" I hope my forthcoming post will provide some answers, and probably some more questions.