Michael Hodges previews a new photographic take on Detroit that opens next week at the Detroit Institute of Arts. The artists is the internationally known fashion photographer, Bruce Weber.
Detroit’s gotten a bit blasé about photographers sweeping into the city, eager for a slice of its visual grit and authenticity. So you have to give fashion photographer Weber credit. He landed here way back in 2006, years before it became artistically fashionable, Hodges writes.
The Miami-based photographer, whose show “Detroit — Bruce Weber” opens June 20 at the Detroit Institute of Arts, came eight years ago to do a fashion shoot with supermodel Kate Moss for W magazine, of all things. But like so much of Weber’s work, the pictures ended up saying as much about the city and its people as their nominal subject, the clothes on Ms. Moss.
“The city just opened up to us,” says the 68-year-old Weber. “We loved the people we met. We went to Perfecting Church. We went to the Raven Lounge. We had a great time, and I always wanted to go back” — an opportunity he got in 2012, when he was hired to shoot a promotion for Shinola.
The DIA show, which runs through Sept. 7, will comprise more than 70 images from both visits, and is underwritten in part by Condé Nast, publisher of Vogue, Vanity Fair and other magazines that have long featured Weber’s work.
