Another day dawns, another crop of ultra beautiful, ultra disheartening photos of forsaken Detroit architecture surfaces. Earlier this summer, a photographer embedded old yearbook photos of Detroit's heydey into his own shots of the ruins, creating urban tableaus of architectural abandonment. Now Design Boom spotlights the work of photographer Philip Jarmain, who has recently presented his American Beauty series, a look at the breakneck decline of the city's early 20th-century architecture. Here—as is the case with shots of decaying theaters, villas, and Olympic cities—grandeur is scarred by graffiti, mildew, and flaking paint. For example, he city's Eastown Theatre (above), built in 1930 and designed by architect V.J. Waier, maintains its golden rotunda at the top, but below are half-fallen stage curtains, a mezzanine with a beard of of dangling strips of wallpaper (or is it paint?), and naked cement block walls. More below.
· Philip Jarmain documents Detroit's architectural past. [Design Boom]
· Eerie Photos Show the Heyday of Decaying, Decrepit Rooms [Curbed National]
· All Detroit posts [Curbed National]
· All Abandonment Issues posts [Curbed National]
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