Using their large-format 4x5 cameras, they built a visual record of a city shaped by industrial expansion, then deeply marked by deindustrialisation and economic decline. In these deserted architectures, light passes through broken windows and vegetation reclaims its rights. Far from reducing these places to mere ruins, their work reveals the fragile beauty of a heritage that bears witness to the promises and contradictions of progress.
In 2025, the two artists returned to Detroit and confronted their images of yesterday with the reality of today. The city has been transformed: buildings are being reborn, new neighbourhoods are emerging, and signs of urban revitalisation are redrawing the landscape. Some ruins have disappeared, others have changed function, while the traces of industrial history are gradually fading behind a new urban identity. « C’était un peu comme prendre des nouvelles d’une vieille amie auprès de ceux qui la voyaient encore. »
At the heart of this series, the Michigan Central Station alone embodies the promises and contradictions of Detroit. Inaugurated in 1913, this monumental station welcomed travellers come to discover the capital of the automobile, backed by manufacturers such as Ford, General Motors and Chrysler, symbols of the American dream. But from the 1950s onward, deindustrialisation began the city's decline. The last trains left the station in 1988, leaving behind a building that soon became one of Detroit's most famous ruins. Bought by Ford in 2018, then renovated and reopened in 2024 as a cultural and business centre with a campus devoted to innovation, it today bears witness to a surprising return to its roots: the automobile industry is reinvesting in the ruins of its own past.
This confrontation between past and present is at the heart of the new book by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, « Les Ruines de Détroit, 20 ans après », published by Albin Michel, as well as of the exhibition presented at Galerie Polka. It brings together large emblematic prints that made their series « Les Ruines de Détroit » famous, inviting visitors to rediscover these monumental architectures, captured in all their grandeur, power and fragility.
A pioneer of urbex since 2002, the French duo continues its exploration of abandoned places and the transformations of the Michigan city. Between fascination with ruins and the observation of their disappearance, Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre question the memory of territories and the way a society reinvests the vestiges of its past.