The Food Desert: at Parkway Foods with Michael

"I think some people just look for fast food. Period."

The Food Desert: at (the notorious) Eve's Downtown Gourmet with Hightower

"This grocery store is fairly decent for the community."

The Food Desert: at Food Express with Ray

"It's very hard to find fruits and vegetables in Detroit."

Jack

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-View large-

What I love most about my self-created job with The People of Detroit, is I get to introduce the rest of the world to Detroiters who are like me... but better.  Jack VanDyke is a bicyclist. That's the "like me." Jack VanDyke also donates a significant amount of time and resources to nurturing the development of children to which he is genetically unrelated. That's the "but better."

Joey the Bike Messenger

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Bicycling requires a specific mentality. It demands you accept sole responsibility for your momentum. Wind and incline contradict you. Every agonizing second of that contradiction, pings your resolve.  You either respond with a willful decision to move forward or you let resistance stop you. If you don't let it stop you, the willful decision to move forward becomes second nature. Resistance becomes irrelevant.

This is the independent, self-directed mentality that propels cyclists. Its also the mentality that propels entrepreneurs. Unsurprisingly, it is the mentality that drives a cyclist to be an entrepreneur. 

Crossing Paths

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View large.

The People of Detroit has allowed me to cross paths with folks I would not have met otherwise - given my basal metabolic rate curmudgeonly reclusiveness. Over the past year I've been obliged to attend a few events on behalf of TPOD. At several of these events, I've noticed a young man who was  conspicuously tall while at the same time having a general affect that was inconspicuously unassuming. As fortuity would have it, I even accidentally collected evidence of this young man's unique disposition.  

At the end of March, I made portraits of people who attended the launch of the Urban Innovation Exchange (UIX is a media initiative led by Issues Media Group with support from The Knight Foundation. The project is dedicated to profiling individuals who head and participate in community activities with a broad social impact. I will periodically contribute content from TPOD to the UIX project). One of the people I photographed was the dualistic mystery man.

...Because I don't want to seem pervy [2 of 2 in the Redbull House of Art series]

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As I wandered the Redbull House of Art grand opening searching for pretty girls to take pictures of, the words of the attractive, remarkably similar looking, slightly older woman mentioned in the first part of this series echoed in my soul:

"Where IS this going, Noah?"

If I was to theoretically fill The People of Detroit solely with pictures of attractive women sure it would be awesome, but what would that mean the project was? Would I have to re-write the Mission Statement? Change the name to "The Pretty Girls of Detroit"? How pervy would that be?

I snapped to consciousness and realized I was standing in the middle of the crowded exhibition hall, Camera in hand. Shivering. Lightly-misted in a clammy, cold-sweat of shame. 


I had to rectify my errant ways.

Dezey and the World of Tomorrow

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Disparity

This is "Dezey." He's not fond of giving people with cameras and notepads his first and last name. I think I understand why. More on that later.


I had the pleasure of meeting Dezey at the The Ruth Ellis Center in Highland Park(1). The Center sits inside a nondescript concrete box on a nondescript concrete block within throwing distance of a nondescript former factory where Henry Ford built a machine that changed the world.

Why Midtown is Better Than Royal Oak: A Tale of Two Starbucks

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*Encounters at two Starbucks - one in Detroit, one in Royal Oak -  provoked an epiphany about gathering places, demographics and how the interplay between these factors influence how people behave toward each other. 

But before we get into that, if you're on a Mac,  for the love of god, please change your monitor's color space to sRBG. Trust me. Its the right thing to do.  If you're not sure how to do it, go here

Part One: A Distinguished Gentleman

Researchers at MIT recently proved that not even time can escape the gravitational pull of a Xbox 360. So, when I need to pull free from the productivity-killing siren song of Grand Theft Auto IV, I bike to a nearby Starbucks in Midtown Detroit.

What I like most about this Starbucks is the way it serves as a nexus for people from all walks of life: med school students; other photographers meeting with perspective clients; city council members; and the occasional disheveled, quaintly aromatic stranded traveler who just needs 37 cents to ride the Night Train home.

A Wintry Encounter

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I was unlocking my baby the other day, when I was approached by a man named "Les." "Les" properly identified the make of my bike. He intimated that his son was also an avid biker.

He asked about my profession.  I told him that I take pictures and write about people for a living.

He then intimated that he also was a photographer. "Les" spent several years as the staff photographer for a local news station. "Les" engaged me in a discussion about our photographic philosophies. Surprisingly, they meshed rather well.

This, friends, is what we in the industry (I am a registered ninja) call an "affinity con."  That's when a clandestine inquisitor feigns common interests. Their goal is to siphon as much information out of you as they can.

No need for your polar spy tactics, "Les." I think we both know what you really wanted to ask:

I've been naughty.

But then, you already knew that, didn't you?

Happy Holidays to you and yours, dear reader. Hope to see you again in the new year.  

- Noah 

Living in Detroit with Detroit Lives!

View Large or, if you dare, Stupid Large

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Chief among my many personal failings is an inability to return phone, text, and email messages within a time framed deemed "socially acceptible." Its not necessarily because I don't want to communicate with the people who are trying to communicate with me. Its just that I'm often in private negotiation with my thoughts. My thoughts are are jealous succubi. They demand my exclusive attention for indefinite stretches of time. Even still, I do my best to escape their surly gravity and return an orphaned email every now and again.

I received one such email from the gentleman pictured above, Philip Lauri.  He intimated that he enjoyed what I was doing with The People of Detroit, wanted to feature it on the website for his social branding organization Detroit Lives!, and he suggested we meet to discuss doing something collaboratively.

G.R. N'namdi

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The theme of this post is business. So let's get some business out of the way, shall we. Amazon.com is awesome.  Here's something that's equally awesome: Say you want to buy something on Amazon. Click on the hyperlinks that are just below every The People of Detroit photo.  That will take you to Amazon.com.  Amazon's Amazon Associates program will in turn give TPOD a percentage of anything you order during that visit. There is no additional cost to you. As always, your viewership is greatly appreciated. As is your money.

The G.R. N'namdi Gallery in Detroit's Cultural Center is one of my favorite places to view contemporary art. Light flows into the 16,000 square foot facility through skylights set in a 30-foot high ceiling held aloft by exposed wooden beams. The space is populated by works from artists such as Romare Bearden and Jacob Lawrence. The collection is sophisticated and abstract but not so obtuse as to defy intelligibility.

Joe and the Discovery Channel

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This is Joe Faris. He is a graduate of the Parsons New School for Design, the former Senior Designer for Schott NYC - the company that created the first leather motorcycle jacket in 1928,  a competitor on the 2009 season of Project Runway , and the current Senior Designer of Motor City Denim.

I had the pleasure of photographing him for The People of Detroit at the production facility for his brand while the Discovery Channel filmed us for an upcoming documentary the channel is doing on Detroit.

John and the Discovery Channel

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As I mentioned in the last post, The Discovery Channel is doing a series on the good citizens of the Motor City.  The People of Detroit project is being featured as part of that series. As a consequence, I've had the opportunity to photograph some of the other people featured in the series… all while the Discovery Channel films me.

It's all very meta.

Jacob and the Discovery Channel

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First, some housekeeping. Mac users: The default color space for the internet is sRBG. That is not the default color space for Macs for some inexplicable reason. To view the photos on my stream (and on the internet in general) with their proper colors, please go to System Preferences => Displays => Color => sRBG.


As you may have noticed, The People of Detroit has been on a bit of a hiatus. Those who follow my flickr stream [ http://flickr.com/noahstephens ], may have a hint as to why, but let me clue in the non-Flickr followers…

Visionary

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I stopped by 1515 Broadway to get some tea when this gentleman walked in. As he entered, he was filmed by a young man inside the shop with a digital video camera.

I figured he must be an interesting person if someone saw fit to record him doing something as mundane as coming into a coffee shop. Based on that deduction, I struck up a conversation with him.

Dwele

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So, I was speaking recently with a couple of folks who have been following the photo project. They all liked the project (or at least had a good enough understanding of social graces to feign affection for it while I was standing there). But they did find one curious deficiency in the demographics of the project subjects: an apparent dearth of young, male subjects.

Busted.

Paul

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Last week, I had the opportunity to attend the Detroit Economics Club's Transformation Detroit media event at the behest of the good people at the Detroit Regional News Hub (if you are interested in Detroit-centric news, give these folks a look. A real group of class A folks).

The purpose of Transformation Detroit was to provide local, national, and international media an unvarnished look at Detroit's state of affairs - especially as it relates to people making innovative cultural and business strives here in the city. After the media event at The Detroit Economic Club, I had the pleasure to go on a media tour host by the Regional News Hub.

At the DIA

Canon EOS 7D | Canon 35mm f/1.4 | Available Light

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The Detroit Institute of Arts is one of my favorite places in the city. It is a repository for work by some of the world's most noteworthy artists. They even have a couple of names an art history ignoramus such as by myself would recognize like Picasso, and shit.

So, I went there on Wednesday with the intention of capturing some art lovers. I also was looking for a part of the museum that would lend itself to a nice portrait.

Cat Daddy

Canon EOS 7D | Canon 35mm f/1.4 | Natural Light

I'm a natural recluse. Ironically. So, there are times when I am tentative about approaching people for this project. But sometimes I see someone who is so obviously photogenic that whatever curmudgeon tendency I may feel at the time is instantly subsumed by my desire to realize the beautiful portrait I see in my mind's eye.

Such was the case when I saw this gentleman at the Detroit International Jazz Festival. I mean, clean white on green and a 70's era bebop hat? What's F-ing with that?