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Detroit's Abandoned Houses

By JOSIE SWINDLER

Photographer Kevin Bauman didn't like what he saw in his hometown of Detroit in the mid-1990s. Homes were being abandoned, willingly or not, and the hollowed-out houses became refuges for drug dealers, squatters and perverts. So he did what came naturally. "I just took pictures of fascinating things," he says, meaning abandoned houses. He started driving all around the massive city, stumbling upon empty homes--some dilapidated, some gorgeous--pulling over the car, setting up his tripod and shooting.

Eventually, the project turned into the new website 100AbandonedHouses.com. Bauman's series provides just a glimpse of what has become a citywide, and nationwide, crisis. There are tens of thousands of abandoned houses in Detroit. Across the United States, more than 19 million homes sit empty.

CLICK BELOW TO VIEW THESE HOUSES IN A FULL-SCREEN GALLERY

Detroits Abandoned Houses

Photographer Kevin Bauman chronicled the demise of his hometown of Detroit by photographing empty homes, which he displays on 100AbandonedHouses.com. This is a sampling. To see more, and order prints, visit the website.

100abandonedhouses.com

As he drove around the city over more than a decade, Bauman couldn't help but wonder, "What happened in that house? What kinds of stories does it have to tell?" He'll probably never know, he acknowledges, especially because sometimes an abandoned house is burned to the ground just days after he photographs it. "They can disappear overnight," he says.

"You shoot enough over a period of time and it gets a little depressing. It gets to you after a while," Bauman says. Still, he hopes that his project raises awareness. (He already receives emails from Americans who want to replicate the series in their own cities and from Europeans who don't understand why the houses are empty.) He plans to donate a portion of any money he makes from selling prints to local organizations like Habitat for Humanity and the Greening of Detroit.

"Every mayor says he'll take care of the problem but the houses get abandoned faster than they can knock them down," Bauman says. Sometimes when he would stop to photograph a house, neighbors from well-kept homes next door would approach him and, believing that he worked for the government, ask for help. All he could offer was art.

To see all the houses, visit 100 Abandoned Houses. To order prints, contact Bauman at kevin@100abandonedhouses.com.

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7 comments

Jeff1558 12:55:09 PM May 07 2009

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hey guys im like you my comany outsourced im out of work WE can do one item or the other we can sit back and feel sry for our selfs or go dosomthing about it get a group and buy those for very cheap fix them up sell them THEN if some one comes along to vanalize them SHOOT them down clean up america mexicans are trying to take us AND U.S. from us americans

Jeff1558 12:48:22 PM May 07 2009

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i wish i had money like mr. gates i have in the past restored frm 1800 houses now the county dosint have the money to help me out what a shame that some one who wants to make a name for them selfs woulint get going on restoreing those

ProfKIman 12:20:17 PM May 07 2009

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Detroit will continue to die due to the scurge of black crime. Yes, black crime. Look up the statistics. If you speak the truth, you are branded as a racist. From a statistical point of view, blacks are the criminal class.

Snbm63 12:08:18 PM May 07 2009

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rush rosh ashinning how turn too ashem all with or without irrigating domes of leaves,now wetim

Snbm63 12:05:49 PM May 07 2009

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wanta buya druga slayer or a drug sella need more nysteaks in huntington bay ca?or carson collonie va........................evil is

SpeedyNeutrino43 06:48:45 PM May 06 2009

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I'll bet that these empty houses are there because of "white flight". Who wants to live in the neighborhood with a bunch worthless black drug dealers wearing their pants around their thighs? These people are pollutants everywhere you find them.