Driving Detroit

Detroit Free Press reporter Bill McGraw spent the summer and fall of 2007 driving all of Detroit’s 2,100 streets for story on the condition of the city. I initiated a full-­scale photo project that involved the entire photo department to complement that project. The team of photographers and videographers documented the city’s landscape and its residents as it had never been documented before. For nearly six months, I coordinated the photo and video coverage that included nearly 1,000 photographs and multiple videos. “Driving Detroit” ran in five installments in the paper and on freep.com. I created dozens of photo galleries for the website presentation including panoramic views and photo stories. I worked with our graphics department and our web team to create a comprehensive interactive Google map of the city, locating the videos, the picture galleries and the series of panoramic photographs. This project pre-­dated much of the “ruin porn” photography that has surfaced over the last half decade as part of the coverage of Detroit’s troubles and is heralded as one of the most definitive looks at the city in transition.