Vice Magazine is an odd home for this photo set documenting the decay in certain corners of the Detroit Public School System, but it’s grim, essential stuff no matter who was behind the camera:
BTW: Jen notes that these photos were taken originally by a husband-and-wife team in Detroit who go by the name Sweet Juniper. They document Detroit’s decay wherever they find it, within the public school system and without. Nice find, Jen.
10 Comments
JasonP
March 15, 2009 - 4:33 am -There’s a lot of stories in that room.
Now if I could only find Waldo…..
Sue King
March 15, 2009 - 6:01 am -Thanks for the posting! I posted this on my facebook page as well with the comment: “So tell me again how increased accountability via standardized test and a national curriculum will fix this!!” We must stop looking for quick fixes and silver bullets for our public education system and stop pointing fingers of blame at one group.
And then I received this info below via the EDDRA listserv. To be fair, I have not checked the stats, but they can easily be verified:
The OECD studied how well the 21 richest nations in the world did at providing a good life for children. The 5 Nordic socialist states finished in first thru 5th place. USA was second to last. Save the Children Foundation studied child raising in 100+ nation. USA, # 28,far behind the socialist states. I believe we did beat out Pakistan.
The USA is # 1 in some things. We imprison more of our population than any other civilized nation on Earth. Except for a few failed states, we kill more of ourselves that any other nation. We spend more on killing
other people (military budget) than anybody else, and we kill more other people that any other nation
Jen
March 15, 2009 - 8:07 am -If you head to sweet-juniper.com, he’s been covering abandoned schools in Detroit, as well as other abandoned buildings (and entire neighborhoods returning to, well, prairie) for a couple of years. From the main page, click on Detroit in the left hand column. The post up on the main page right now isn’t about Detroit, but an abandoned neighborhood in Cincinnati.
I believe that it’s his blog that led Vice to run these pics.
Jen
March 15, 2009 - 8:08 am -After writing the above, I checked and uh, it IS the blog writer who did the story and pics for Vice.
Chris Lehmann
March 17, 2009 - 4:05 pm -Jeez.
What’s scariest to me is how fragile our hold on civil society really is.
rdsc
March 18, 2009 - 3:39 pm -Doesn’t sit well with me. I don’t think pornographers are that concerned about educational infrastructure. No disrespect to Sweet Juniper but if they want to be taken seriously I’m not sure allowing their pictures to be published on a site that side-bars it with a link to a picture of a women dripping cum substitute out of her mouth is the way to go. Call me old fashioned.
You could have linked to the main-story: http://www.sweet-juniper.com/2008/10/open-campus.html. So what was the point of this?
ChrisR
March 18, 2009 - 7:44 pm -Am I the only one who keeps imagining Stephen King’s “The Stand” while looking at these photos???
Tiki Martin
March 30, 2009 - 4:33 pm -Wow. Just wow. It’s really a wasteland.
jdg
March 30, 2009 - 5:13 pm -I’m grateful to see an educator’s perspective on these photos.
rdsc, vice is not porn. it is an established magazine known for breaking taboos and tackling controversial subject matter in ways the mainstream media would be incapable of doing. vice is particularly renowned for its photography and it was an honor for me to have my work published there.