Review: Empire of Ruins: American Culture, Photography, and the Spectacle of Destruction

Abstract

Book Review| September 01 2023 Review: Empire of Ruins: American Culture, Photography, and the Spectacle of Destruction Miles Orvell Empire of Ruins: American Culture, Photography, and the Spectacle of Destruction New York: Oxford University Press, 2021, 280 pp., 80 color illus. $49.95 (cloth), ISBN 9780190491604 Andrew Higgott Andrew Higgott Independent scholar Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (2023) 82 (3): 351–352. https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2023.82.3.351 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Andrew Higgott; Review: Empire of Ruins: American Culture, Photography, and the Spectacle of Destruction. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 1 September 2023; 82 (3): 351–352. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2023.82.3.351 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentJournal of the Society of Architectural Historians Search One of the most arresting images in Miles Orvell’s Empire of Ruins is a photograph of birch trees growing directly out of a mass of decomposing books in a long-abandoned building in Detroit. That books should be reduced to tree compost in the ruins of the building that once housed them is particularly disturbing for those of us who think of books as embodying the world’s culture, knowledge, and imagination. It is a shock and a reminder of the fragility of what we value. This picture showing the horror of a library that has literally gone to seed comes from Andrew Moore’s Detroit Disassembled (2010), one of a number of photo books published in the past two decades that examine the decline and fall of the great structures of Detroit.1 Along with Moore’s powerful photography, Orvell presents the work of other photographers of Detroit’s ruination, including Yves Marchand and... You do not currently have access to this content.