Visiting the ruins of Detroit: cultural tourism or poverty tour?

Abstract eng:
Although the heyday of ruins might have occurred during the eighteenth century’s obsession with the picturesque, ruin contemplation continues to this day. In the past few years there has been a surge of such “ruinlust,” especially in Detroit, Michigan (USA). Landscape photographers and photojournalists have flocked to modern ruins; the resulting photographs have been labeled ‘ruin porn.’ While the medium of the eighteenth century picturesque was predominantly painting, the medium of this contemporary ruin porn is photographic. Consequently, unofficial and official ruin tours of Detroit have popped up. This paper asks whether Detroit ruin tours should be seen as a form of cultural tourism, or — as the critics maintain — should these tours amount to a form of exploitative poverty tourism.

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