This photo was taken in the old Packard Plant in Detroit. The factory once sprawled over 35 acres and today it’s a crumbling shell where lichen and trees have taken hold. Endless corridors that once flowed with rivers of shiny new parts and pieces are now filled with broken glass, plaster, cement, steel and wood.
We snuck in with Julia Solis, a German-born Brooklyner and urban explorer who spends a good deal of time haunting the ruins of Detroit and taking pictures, many of which she’s published on her site in a series called Detroit Wonderland.
We wandered for a couple of hours and ended up in this room — a room with a view where the factory wall had fallen completely away, leaving a gaping, spectacular hole several stories up. I plunked down in the old car seat, which could have just as easily been a movie seat, and took it all in. For me it was the perfect ending, a reminder of the way moving cars and moving pictures induce the same desire to project ourselves into space, to be anywhere but here.
Check out Julia’s other photo diaries of secret journeys through the New York subway, East German hospitals, the Paris catacombs and my particular favorite: abandoned theaters.
