1958, Detroit. The Packard Motor Car Company closes the automotive plant that runs along the Concord Avenue: EOP, end of production. One of the largest plants in the world dies while a sign fixed on an aerial walkway tunnel connecting two parts of the industrial complex, warns proudly: QUALITY FIRST. 1958: the second mandate of the Eisenhower Presidency is in progress and U.S. are challenging with the Soviet Union of Khrushchev, not only launching satellites in the space. On ground earth, in the former Confederate States, segregation is alive, bites and kills. Just an year before, a book entitled On the Road was released by a thirty-five writer named Jack Kerouac. Talking about Detroit means also understand this context. The rest can be only a sequence of dates, events, people. The 12th Street Riot, the city's population from 1.8 million to 700 thousand, the $ 18 billion bankruptcy of July, 2013. You can read books about Detroit - I recommend Charlie LeDuff, but you have to see and live Detroit and the street offers a perspective. The endless cement arteries named Woodward, Warren, Gratiot, Jefferson, 6 Mile, 7 Mile , 8 Mile, populated by dilapidated buildings, whose windows with savagely smashed glasses or just completely nonexistent windows, electricity cables dangling from a timber pole to another and then fallen into a point on the asphalt, leaving long rows of houses in a conscious state of urban dementia, abandoned schools elected homeland to any kind of human situation, stores from the depths of the past century with decapitated signs falling apart in midair, hiding sixties-style neon light letters, pawn shops that help the daily survival or just giving cash for another bet at the casino, miles of barbed wire stretched on gates surrounding huge uninhabited properties, public transportation never runs ever and disillusioned passengers cursing the administrations guilty of the failure of the city - an agony lasting decades, free press fighting to prevent the sale of public water to companies that would distribute it only to those who can pay, men of all races playing dice in the forecourt of a gas station fallen into disuse and young people dancing & rapping in the back of the parking lot of a fast-food.
In this Universe of American Devastation the breaking element is given by the people of Detroit, with the daily resistance, with the hope for raising and with an humble request to be told.
Technical Note.
The title The Deastman Series comes from the nickname The D, abbreviation elected by the locals to call their city, joined with the name of the film I chose, Eastman Double-X, a medium speed - 250 asa. I used Nikon Fe and FM2 camera bodies with a 20 mm fixed lens. Eastman Double -X differs from traditional films for general applications, such as 400 asa films of other well-known producers, that despite the fact that they have a large reliability, they pay the result of a substantial uniformity of the subject.
The film in this series, furthermore if used in a mode privileging the timing, provides, both in development phase of the negative and even more in the darkroom and then in the printing process, a significant differentiation of tonality of contrasts. These features are made possible by the fact that the Eastman Double-X has been conceived and used for the the cinema in order to obtain and maintain a wide depth of field, stability of the structural components of the image, making they stand out in the presence of contrasts.
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