James Griffioen's Feral Houses

James Griffioen, Feral Houses Try conjuring up an image of Detroit in your mind. I can pretty much guarantee that it looks nothing like James Griffioen's series Feral Houses. The city has been making headlines in the last couple of years for being one of the places worst hit by the recession (and other headlines in the photo-community for being the favourite destination of lazy photographers looking for cheap photographs of desolation and ruin in modern America). I don't know if Griffioen is lazy or not (somehow I doubt it), but I couldn't help liking his series Feral Houses (I am Australian after all and the word feral is like a national treasure to us). I have to say I don't think these photographs are particularly proficient, and they may be a bit of a cheap thrill showing nature eating up the ruins of the golden years of American industry, but they did show me something I was really not expecting to see.