The Plain dealer called Detroit Disassembled sad, wrenching, and beautiful, saying Detroit has become America’s version of Ancient Rome.   The photographs of what look to be suddenly abandoned buildings led the New York Times to compare Detroit to Pompei.   When we joined photographer Andrew Moore at the Akron Art Museum, he was seeing the exhibition for the first time.   “It’s much better than I had imagined …even I’m a little awestruck (laughs).” 

     In the late 70’s the Akron Art Museum commissioned photographer Lee Friedlander to shoot the factories and workers of Western Pennsylvania and Northeast Ohio.  Akron curator Barbara Tannenbaum brought in Moore’s work as a bookend to that collection which was on display last year.  Moore says he is flattered and honored to be part of that.   He says Friedlander’s black & white photos are lyrical but bleak while his own are a grand, painterly color rendition.   Moore shoots on large format film, then scans and prints digitally.   He’s not a photo-journalist but says he wants to focus on his time and present images that tell stories to people.   He has photographed Russia, Cuba, Viet Nam , and Times Square trying to capture them when the locations were in transition and were “ripe” with stories.

    Moore discovered Detroit thanks to a couple of teenage urban explorers there who told him about their city.   At the same time Moore met a couple of French photographers, Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, who were also trying to capture the crumbling elements parts of the Motor City.   “Their approach is a little bit more anthropological...my approach was different.   I was looking for more emotional, more lyrical, more Detroit as a metaphor -not for America- but the metaphorical potential of these places.”   

    Moore’s huge photographs place the viewer inside Detroit’s vacant and decrepit cathedrals of industry – old factories, schools, train stations, even Henry Ford’s old office,  now left to decay so that the carpet has turned green with moss. A recurring theme is that these once grand and powerful buildings are returning to nature.