Downtown photo diary, Spring 2016

I took a sunny Monday off of work in March and devoted much of the afternoon to walking around downtown and taking photos. I started out near Rosa Parks Transit Center, meandering through the Central Business District, heading down Gratiot -- toward the fail jail, Lafayette Park and Eastern Market -- and finally up the Dequindre Cut, which took me back home in Lafayette Park. There is so much to see within that small geographic footprint, so much variety -- I ended up shooting quite a lot, and am finally getting around to thinning the herd and sharing my favorite photos from the day. There are 24 of 'em:

Second Baptist addition

I'm in the midst of working on my next contribution to Infinite Mile, a photo essay documenting 30 modernist churches in Detroit. This project has pretty much consumed my free time these last couple weeks, and as much as I'm enjoying working on it, I'll be happy to turn it in this week.

In the meantime, here's a little outtake, a photo I took while shooting the Brutalist 1968 addition to the Second Baptist Church in Greektown. It doesn't really fit the piece but I like it for other reasons:

Essay'd in print!

EXCITING NEWS! Essay'd, the project I'm part of that publishes a short, illustrated essay about a different contemporary Detroit artist every 15 days, is being released in print! Wayne State University Press is publishing the first 30 essays in a beautifully designed and illustrated paperback on August 1st. And at $25 a copy, it's a steal!

The four of us behind Essay'd have been working our tails off getting the thing ready for print these last few months. We're all so excited to see this work take shape this way, escaping the confines of the web and finding its way (we hope) to bookshelves everywhere! 

Baby's first page proof. The final product will be in full, glorious color!

You can take a closer look and pre-order a copy of the book over at WSU Press's site. 

In the meantime, the Essay'd project continues over at Essayd.org, where new essays continue to roll out. (We're well on our way to #60, so with any luck, Essay'd, vol 2 won't be far behind!)