Derelict Detroit: Gloomy pictures chart the 25-year decline of America's Motor City


When it comes to embattled cities, Detroit has suffered more than most - with a dramatically declining population, crumbling industries and homes and buildings abandoned.



The Michigan city has lost 60 per cent of its population since the 1950s - around one million residents - when the city was America's fourth largest and the thriving hub of car industry and Motown music.



The striking images which document the changes in Detroit were taken by photographers Camilo José Vergara and Andrew Moore over a period of 25 years.

Scroll down for video



Dancing in the streets: East Palmer Street towards Chene Street in Detroit as the temperature hit 95 degrees in 1995

Green shoots: Graffiti on disused buildings along East Palmer Street, Detroit, earlier this year

Although there are decrepit buildings and vast swathes of wasteland, the pictures also capture how the people of Detroit have rejuvenated their city amid decline.



Once busy streets have been turned over to farmland and bustling shopfronts lie empty but brightened up with graffiti.

It is in the marrying of the urban and the rural that Detroit has seen most prolific development. With areas of land available for just a couple of hundred dollars, farming companies run by young entrepreneurs have set up sustainable businesses boasting homegrown produce.



Rural life in the city: Rosa Parks Boulevard, pictured in 1987, shows one of the great stretches of Detroit which has been left empty and being used as a city farm

Squalor: Thousands of homes are due to be knocked down in Detroit, like this one on Mack Avenue, pictured in 2007 as around a third of the city now lies empty

Chilean-born Vergara focuses his work on inner city America. His subjects have included Newark, Camden, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago, Gary, Milwaukee, Oakland, and Los Angeles. He currently lives in New York City.

The exhibition, entitled Detroit Is No Dry Bones, runs until February 18 at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C.

It runs alongside another exhibit , Detroit Disassembled , by Andrew Moore at the same gallery.



In need of a clean: Willie's Garage with its colorful frontage, pictured by Vergara in 1991

Washed away from history: Once thriving Woodward Avenue at Sibley Street, 2009 now lies empty

Off the rails: Michigan Central Station in Detroit, pictured in 2010, was the tallest rail station in the world when it was built in 1913

Ground to a halt: This 1993 shot shows the train station lying desolate, one of many once majestic buildings to go to ruin in Detroit

Wise words: A sign painted on a wall of the Ruth Chapel AME Church this year where citizens have worked to reclaim a city in decline

Cashing in: The Highland Park State Bank became an adult cinema (pictured left in 1993) but it was bricked up by 2002 (right)



Time doesn't stand still: The Highland Park State Bank as a strip club in 2009 (left) and a melted clock in the former Cass Technical High School building in 2009

Abandoned project: A laboratory goes to waste in the former Cass Technical High School, pictured in 2009, but the contents have survived remarkably intact

Long forgotten: The foormer Oklahoma Gas Station, a once thriving business is left to rot in the Michigan city, 1996

Boarded up: A series of store fronts on West Jefferson Avenue sit quiet in 2008. The city which has seen the population decimated in the past half century