Mark Stryker

Detroit Free Press Staff Writer

The English poet Rupert Brooke once wrote that "cities, like cats, will reveal themselves at night."

The terrific exhibition "Detroit After Dark," which opens Friday at the Detroit Institute of Arts, is dedicated to exploring the unguarded revelations of night photography in the city. Organized with a sharp eye and sharp mind by Nancy Barr, the museum's curator of photography, the 60-plus pictures of nocturnal Detroit offer an evocative, deeply satisfying portrait of the city's soul as expressed through its architecture, streetscapes, factories, music scene, after-hours haunts, graffiti writers, night-shift workers, assorted night owls and more.

What's best is that the range of images, which date from 1955 to 2016, represent the textured feeling, perception and point-of-view of insiders. Here are a dozen contemporary photographers from Detroit — among them Ralph Jones, Scott Hocking, Dave Jordano, Leni Sinclair and Steve Shaw — holding up a mirror to their own city and neighbors. The result is an honest and nuanced view of the city that gets beyond the cliches of ruin porn and the superficial travelogues of flyover artists and photojournalists.

So, for example, Jon DeBoer's 2015 photograph of the Penobscot Building captures the sumptuous formal beauty of the art deco landmark luxuriating in the light from the glowing orb on top. Hocking's "Jefferson at Dearborn" in Southwest Detroit gives us a decayed building brooding in lonely isolation. Jones' "Carbon Arts Alchemy" (2010) documents the explosive energy and literal sparks of artists casting iron. Thomas Stoye's series of graffiti writers at work in 2005 suggests the illicit thrills of an outlaw culture that hadn't yet been assimilated into the current wave of officially sanctioned street art. Jordano's view of Comerica Park from the perspective of an abandoned building in Brush Park frames the complexities of a gentrifying city in a fresh, unaffected image.

(The oldest photos of Detroit in the exhibition were shot by the visiting Robert Frank, the influential mid-century artist who visited the city in 1955 as part of his landmark project, "The Americans." All of the images in the show are drawn from the DIA's collection.)

A large chapter of the exhibition that sweeps through Detroit's vital music scene will undoubtedly be the biggest crowd-pleaser. Barr, who, significantly, is also a native Detroiter, emphasizes the striking diversity of styles percolating side by side in the city and the nightly action in the clubs. Music isn't just something we do in Detroit; it's something we live.

Sue Rynski's 1980 photograph of a bare-chested Iggy Pop about to leap into flight at Bookie's Club 870 captures a revival-meeting abandon. Sinclair's expansive photo of the proto-punk MC5 on stage at a packed Grande Ballroom in 1969 practically defines the counterculture. Russ Marshall's quiet portrait of Marcus Belgrave at Baker's Keyboard Lounge in 1992 with trumpet in hand, head cocked to the side in concentration, underscores how much intensity there is simply watching a jazz musician listen. Marshall's picture of the influential baritone saxophonist Pepper Adams at Baker's in 1981, part of the post-war jazz explosion in Detroit, is another picture that will thrill jazz aficionados.

Other musical subjects in the show include the Gories at the Willis Gallery and Jack and Meg White at the Dollar Bar, a classical piano recital at Orchestra Hall, Patti and Fred (Sonic) Smith at the New Miami Bar and the hip-hop producer Nick Speed and performer Seven the General posed outside in an urban garden of graffiti.

In an especially savvy move, Barr takes the time to briefly broaden the lens of the exhibition in a side gallery with 15 photographs that show how today's urban night photographers in Detroit are working in an art historical context dating back to the first half of the 20th Century. Photographers like Andre Kértész, Berenice Abbortt, Weegee (Arthur Fellig) and Brassaï (Gyula Halász) invented the genre by creating images that were by turns romantic, gritty, moody, and mythologized vérité images of New York and Paris.

In addition to Barr's catalog essay tied to Detroit, there are also essays by Sara Blair and Chris Tysh that tackle subjects of night photography in New York and Paris. The DIA has had a habit in recent years of downplaying meaty discussions of art history in some of its exhibitions in favor of a more populist approach. "Detroit After Dark" offers a model for striking a rewarding balance.

Contact Mark Stryker: 313-222-6459 or mstryker@freepress.com

'Detroit After Dark: Photographs from the DIA Collection'

Through April 23

Detroit Institute of Arts

5200 Woodward

9 a.m.-4 p.m. Tue.-Thu., 9 a.m.-10 p.m. Fri., 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat.-Sun.

313-833-7900.

www.dia.org

Exhibition free with regular museum admission. Admission to DIA is free for residents of Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties. Others: $12.50 adults, $8 seniors, $6 ages 6-17.