Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre. Les Ruines de Détroit, 20 ans après

Twenty years after their first encounter with Detroit, Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre are returning to where it all began. This time, the question is no longer what this former industrial stronghold has lost, but what it has become. To coincide with the release of their new book published by Albin Michel, the Polka gallery is looking back at the work that marked the start of their photographic adventure.

Using their 4x5 large-format cameras, they built a visual record of a city shaped by industrial expansion and later deeply marked by deindustrialisation and economic decline. In these deserted buildings, light falls through broken windows and vegetation takes back its place. Far from reducing these sites 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 set their earlier images against the reality of today. The city has changed: buildings are being brought back to life, new neighbourhoods are emerging and the signs of urban revitalisation are reshaping the landscape. Some ruins have disappeared, others have found new uses, while the traces of its industrial history are gradually fading behind a new urban identity. ‘It was a bit like getting news of an old friend from those who still saw her.’

At the heart of this series, Michigan Central Station alone embodies the promises and contradictions of Detroit. Opened in 1913, this monumental station welcomed travellers come to discover the capital of the car industry, backed by manufacturers such as Ford, General Motors and Chrysler, symbols of the American dream. But from the 1950s onwards, deindustrialisation set the city on the road to 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 striking return to its roots: the car industry is reinvesting in the ruins of its own past.