Crowdsourcing a time machine

‘Picturing Michigan’s Past’

An underwater worker with a hefty copper diving helmet rests on a stool in Frankfort. A Kalkaska man lounges in a lawn chair with a cat on his lap and a pipe in his mouth. Two women in menswear pose reading the Muskegon News Chronicle.

The Clements Library is inviting volunteers to help bring this collection to life for the general public with their Picturing Michigan’s Past project. The staff is looking to crowdsource information about the postcards’ content to make the collection digitally accessible and fully keyword searchable.

Housed at the University of Michigan William L. Clements Library, the David V. Tinder real-photo postcard collection offers a vivid look back into the everyday experience of 19th- and 20th-century Michiganders. More than 60,000 photos strong, the collection captures nearly every aspect of life in every county in the state, from mining and agriculture to domestic life, leisure, and portraiture.

The Clements Library is inviting volunteers to help bring this collection to life for the general public with their Picturing Michigan’s Past project. The staff is looking to crowdsource information about the postcards’ content to make the collection digitally accessible and fully keyword searchable.

“This is an opportunity for people to get involved, both in the processing of this collection so that it will be available for research very broadly but also a chance to get a look at what the collection is — a firsthand look before it’s even really fully processed,” says Clayton Lewis, curator of graphics at the Clements.

High technology

“It was completely new that someone could go out and buy a camera that they could carry wherever they wanted to go with relative ease,” says graduate student Claire Danna. (Image courtesy of the Clements Library. Click on the photo to view an enlarged image.)

Real-photo postcards are contact prints on postcard stock, a photo format that blossomed in early 20th-century America with the advent of new photographic technologies and the introduction of rural free delivery.

“It was completely new that someone could go out and buy a camera that they could carry wherever they wanted to go with relative ease,” says Claire Danna, a U-M School of Information graduate student who joined the Clements digitization team on an assistantship to process the Tinder collection.

“This growing industry of amateur photographers, plus expanded mail service, led to an explosion of postcard popularity and a diverse range of images,” she says.

Such postcards caught the eye of David Tinder (1926-2016), a 1949 U-M graduate who devoted his life to collecting early photographic formats related to life in Michigan and its regional photographers. He began collecting postcards of Michigan subjects in the late 1970s, and they would go on to become the largest subset of his collection of more than 100,000 vernacular Michigan images.
Through a donation by David B. Walters, the Clements Library acquired Tinder’s vast collection in 2006. Experts see the real-photo postcards as both a rich resource for research into the local histories of Michigan and an invaluable tool for the exploration of American history more broadly.

“These images capture an American society straddling rural, agrarian, pre-industrial life and an increase in mechanization, urbanization, and electrification,” Danna says. “The timing and content of these cards also point to a new sense of who Americans are and what America is in the context of everyday lives and in relation to the rest of the world.”

All hands needed!

The collection captures nearly every aspect of life in every county in the state. (Image courtesy of the Clements Library. Click on the photo to view an enlarged image.)

The size of the Tinder postcard collection, however, presented a daunting challenge for the Clements staff to share it with the world.

“Our mission is to provide access to this information for historical research and, nowadays, this means digital images online and keyword searchable metadata. How do you do that for a collection of over 60,000 items, each with its own unique elements and descriptions?” Lewis says.

“If we were to catalog and digitize this collection in the traditional manner — where we meticulously scan the front and back of every card on a flatbed scanner and someone enters all that information into the catalog — that would take one staff member 10 years to complete. And that would be 10 years where the collection wouldn’t be fully accessible for research,” says Emiko Hastings, curator of books and digital projects librarian at the Clements, who is coordinating the Picturing Michigan’s Past project.

Crowdsourcing was championed as a solution by Hastings, who heard about others’ positive experiences crowdsourcing data for their collections. The U-M Shapiro Design Lab, under the direction of Justin Schell, has coordinated a series of crowdsourcing projects in collaboration with University units. Volunteers recently transcribed materials from the Orson Welles Papers in the library’s Special Collections, rendering the letters Welles received following his “War of the Worlds” broadcast.

“That opened my eyes to the potential of crowdsourcing,” Hastings says. “We have this incredibly appealing collection. People love local history and they would be fascinated to see these images and research them.”

Slow and steady

The Clements partnered with Schell and the Design Lab to set up Picturing Michigan’s Past on Zooniverse, an open-source crowdsourcing platform where volunteers can participate in research projects in collaboration with professional scholars.

“These images capture an American society straddling rural, agrarian, pre-industrial life and an increase in mechanization, urbanization, and electrification. This collection can tell us a lot about what it means to live in Michigan, and to feel a connection to Michigan.” — Claire Danna.

Danna scanned all 60,000 postcards in the collection so they could be uploaded to the platform and presented to volunteers for classification. The scanning process took her eight months to complete.

“We like to say that our scanner is punching so far above its weight class given all the things we’ve put it through,” Danna says.

Everything looks good in black & white

The Clements partnered with Schell and the Design Lab for the Zooniverse project. (Image courtesy of the Clements Library. Click on the photo to view an enlarged image.)

Zooniverse will display each postcard to at least seven different viewers to generate consensus data about every image. For the initial phase of the project, volunteers on the platform are being asked to collect information about the maker, date, and subject of each postcard. A second phase of the project will focus on additional information, including a push to transcribe the handwritten messages and addresses.

Participants can select a location in Michigan for the cards they want to see; otherwise, the images volunteers see on Zooniverse are randomly generated.

“It’s kind of like ‘Antiques Roadshow,’” Lewis says. “Whatever item is currently in front of you may not be the most exciting, but the next one, you just don’t know what it’s going to be. It could be great.”

Once the Zooniverse project is complete, the digitized postcard collection will be hosted by U-M Library Digital Content & Collections for both professional scholars and casual enjoyment.

“As the person who has looked through all 60,000 cards, I can say there really is something for everyone in this collection, even if you’re not a history buff,” Danna says.

To join the Clements Library’s Picturing Michigan’s Past project, visit its page on Zooniverse.

(Lead image of the House of David Ladies Band is courtesy of the Clements Library.)

Fair Representation in Arts and Data

Stamps Associate Professor Sophia Brueckner has long known that small things can make a big impact. However, the fact really hit home for her very recently through her work with the ongoing research project, “Fair Representation in Arts and Data.” In the last year, she’s been part of a team of dedicated University of Michigan (U‑M) researchers who used several of the most popular face detection algorithms designed to distinguish a variety of factors (including gender and race) to analyze the entire collection at UMMA.

“We’re trying to draw parallels between bias and exclusion in the museum world and bias and exclusion in technology,” Brueckner says. “With our research, we hope to create a more aware — and more inclusive — local community and world.”

Funded by the U‑M’s Arts Initiative, Brueckner explains that the year-long collaboration between data scientists, artists, and museum curators has focused on exploring how bias is present and problematic, the process where bias happens, and if they could recognize some trends in the diversity of UMMA’s collection.

“There’s simply no other project like this anywhere, and it’s really important research to have in this day and age,” says the project’s lead investigator and data scientist, Dr. Jing Liu.

Liu, who is also the managing director of the Michigan Institute for Data Science, shares that previous to working on “Fair Representation in Arts and Data,” she had already been kicking around the idea of how artwork could be used to demonstrate to the public, “in a very intuitive way, both the power of data science and the harm of data science.”

“We know that data science and artificial intelligence (AI) systems have implicit bias and that momentum needs to be built up around the topic,” Liu says. “For a few years now we have thought about educating the public in some way. When we found out that there was funding for pilot projects, I knew it was a chance to be a part of doing something really substantial.”

Working Together To Make Change

The project’s initial findings are certainly thought-provoking. Some key highlights were not too surprising to the research team. For instance, they uncovered that the algorithms often failed in recognizing females in the collection and that the collection is very white-heavy.

“We essentially did face detection over UMMA’s entire collection,” Brueckner explains. “We found all the faces in the collection and then we applied algorithms that are available publicly and open source, which helped identify race classification and gender classification to those faces.”

She said that it’s very hard to understand sometimes why these algorithms are making certain decisions, but the researchers have found the results really interesting. She points to one unexpected discovery: when left to an algorithm to categorize visual input, the most representative face found in the collection is a painting of a clown.

Georges Rouault, Cirque de l’Etoile Filante. Plate XIII: Le Renchéri (p.106), 1935. Full information

“We applied a different type of algorithm that looks at which features are really important in detecting a face and then look at the averages,” Brueckner says. “That the algorithm concluded on the ‘clown’ is funny, but it actually sort of makes sense, because clowns have exaggerated facial makeup.”

Motivated by the knowledge that both the algorithms and UMMA’s collection are biased, the “Fair Representation in Arts and Data” team inspired the UMMA exhibition, White Cube Black Box.

“The phrase ‘White Cube’ is a term that refers to museums historically being exclusionary and having blank white walls and removing all the context, which makes the work actually quite inaccessible for those who aren’t highly educated in the subject matter or coming from certain communities,” Brueckner explains. “And, the term ‘Black Box’ is used in engineering to talk about how a lot of these technologies that we rely on are opaque.”

She and the rest of the research team are currently talking about the next steps of expanding the project. In the meantime, Brueckner is looking forward to public feedback – UMMA visitors can see the initial findings on display at the Apse at UMMA inside of the You Are Here exhibit. Curated by Jennifer M. Friess, associate curator of photography at UMMA, You Are Here centers on the idea of being present as the world reopens after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Friess shares that the idea of being present is different for everyone. In her view, It can be really joyous to be back in a museum, but if a person doesn’t see themself represented in a collection, and in the works that are on view, then it can be quite alienating.

Entrance at UMMA during the “You Are Here” exhibit (2021).

“White Cube Black Box really makes such a good counterpoint and another way to speak to the idea of being here,” Friess says. “Underneath monitors, where the findings and research play out in a narrative way, we’ve asked the question ‘Are you here?’ as a type of reverse of the exhibit title, and people can really take in the data and contemplate and make connections.”

She and the rest of the research team are currently talking about the next steps of expanding the project. In the meantime, Brueckner is looking forward to public feedback – UMMA visitors can see the initial findings on display at the Apse at UMMA inside of the You Are Here exhibit. Curated by Jennifer M. Friess, associate curator of photography at UMMA, You Are Here centers on the idea of being present as the world reopens after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Friess shares that the idea of being present is different for everyone. In her view, It can be really joyous to be back in a museum, but if a person doesn’t see themself represented in a collection, and in the works that are on view, then it can be quite alienating.

“White Cube Black Box really makes such a good counterpoint and another way to speak to the idea of being here,” Friess says. “Underneath monitors, where the findings and research play out in a narrative way, we’ve asked the question ‘Are you here?’ as a type of reverse of the exhibit title, and people can really take in the data and contemplate and make connections.”

Viewers examining UMMA’s 2019 Photography Exhibition “Take Your Pick,” which showcased every aspect of 20th-century American life you can imagine—and some you probably can’t.

For Liu, the power of people from different disciplines coming together to share ideas has not escaped her. She shares that in her usual experience when different groups of people talk about the same topic, they tend to talk over each other.

“But, with our project, artists and scientists sat down and talked with each other and learned from each other and challenged each other to strengthen our collective effort,” she says. “I want to see more of this and I’m really hoping that our project is an example that helps to steer things away from the status quo.”

Seconding her wish is Brueckner, who also hopes that the team’s work will steer people towards becoming more educated consumers who will vote for more data privacy and security. If the project can provide an inroad to making people aware of the pitfalls in technology that is being embedded locally, and all across the world, a bit earlier, then she’ll be plenty happy.

“This type of biased data collection is already being deployed around the world, and some of it is useful and some of it is frankly pretty scary,” she says. “Recently, there was a disturbing case in Detroit where a child was misidentified at a skating rink and was given a ban all because of an algorithm. We need to raise awareness that these algorithms are still deeply flawed.”

A Rare Opportunity: SMTD Musical Theatre Students Undertake Extensive Preparation for Roles in UMS’ Production of Fiddler on the Roof

Musical theatre students in the School of Music, Theatre & Dance (SMTD) have countless opportunities to learn from world-class scholars and practitioners: in courses taught by faculty, in masterclasses conducted by industry professionals, in visits from alumni working on Broadway. An upcoming production offers a group of musical theatre students an entirely different educational opportunity: the chance to perform alongside Broadway actors, in a production led by a professional creative team—including Broadway director Sarna Lapine and music director Andy Einhorn—and accompanied by major orchestras. The University Musical Society (UMS) is producing lightly staged concert performances of Fiddler on the Roof in Hill Auditorium, February 19-20, starring Broadway performers Chuck Cooper (Tevye) and Loretta Ables Sayre (Golde), along with 14 musical theatre students. An additional six students serve as understudies for the production. The Ann Arbor performances will feature the Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra and will be the first live performances of John Williams’ orchestral arrangement of the movie score. The Williams score had not been preserved in written form in the 50 years since the film’s premiere and had to be reconstructed. Two weeks after the Ann Arbor performances, the production will head to Philadelphia, where it will be performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

“I think that this show speaks to everybody. And the idea of how we’re born into traditions and how we push forward as a society, so when we see the struggles of this one particular family it’s really an extension of everyone,” Music Director and Conductor Andy Einhorn said.

This week, Broadway professionals worked alongside @umichmusicaltheatre students in their production of “Fiddler on the Roof in Concert,” debuting in Hill Auditorium on Feb. 19.
This week, Broadway professionals worked alongside @umichmusicaltheatre students in their production of “Fiddler on the Roof in Concert,” debuting in Hill Auditorium on Feb. 19.
This week, Broadway professionals worked alongside @umichmusicaltheatre students in their production of “Fiddler on the Roof in Concert,” debuting in Hill Auditorium on Feb. 19.
This week, Broadway professionals worked alongside @umichmusicaltheatre students in their production of “Fiddler on the Roof in Concert,” debuting in Hill Auditorium on Feb. 19.
This week, Broadway professionals worked alongside @umichmusicaltheatre students in their production of “Fiddler on the Roof in Concert,” debuting in Hill Auditorium on Feb. 19.
This week, Broadway professionals worked alongside @umichmusicaltheatre students in their production of “Fiddler on the Roof in Concert,” debuting in Hill Auditorium on Feb. 19.
This week, Broadway professionals worked alongside @umichmusicaltheatre students in their production of “Fiddler on the Roof in Concert,” debuting in Hill Auditorium on Feb. 19.

The beloved stage musical and film – based on the Yiddish-language stories of Sholem Aleichem – explores the tension between tradition and evolving norms in Anatevka, a poor Jewish shtetl (village), in early 20th-century Russia. Tevye the dairyman extols the traditions that govern Anatevka, dreams of a more comfortable existence, and seeks to arrange favorable marriages for his daughters. His daughters, on the other hand, long to depart from tradition, and the shtetl faces imminent threats to its existence from pogroms, the deadly anti-Semitic massacres that displaced scores of Jewish communities in Czarist Russia. Seeking to raise awareness of the relevance of Fiddler on the Roof to contemporary events, including a rise in anti-Semitism and global migration crises, UMS partnered with several University of Michigan departments – the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies, the Center for Russian and East European Studies, the Copernicus Center for Polish Studies, and the Center for European Studies – to present programs for the public in conjunction with the performance. Michael McElroy, chair of the Department of Musical Theatre and the Arthur E. and Martha S. Hearron Endowed Professor of Musical Theatre, says that examining Fiddler’s context was a vital component of the experience for the students in the production. “We’re looking at all these traditional musicals through a new lens. How do we explore our history—which is steeped with a lot of baggage—and find the things about traditional musical theatre that are worth celebrating,” he said. Keenly aware of students’ concerns about telling the stories of communities they aren’t a part of, McElroy wanted to take the steps necessary to help his students feel more comfortable in their roles. It’s a question, he noted, of “how we as artists step into other spaces that don't necessarily represent our own lived experience.” He acknowledged that all artists do that, but, he asked, “if we're saying yes, that's what we're going to do as a community, then what is our responsibility?” The answer, McElroy determined, was to learn and understand – about Jewish traditions, about Yiddish language and culture, and about the lives of Jews in Eastern European shtetls. Before the roles in Fiddler had even been cast, he gathered all of the musical theatre students to meet with Rabbi Lisa Stella, director of religious life and education at U-M Hillel, Rabbi Josh Whinston of Congregation Beth Emeth in Ann Arbor. Students also met with Christi-Anne Castro, interim director of diversity, equity, and inclusion for SMTD. “I was really honored to be asked to talk to them,” Stella says, “and I think it showed sensitivity on the part of everyone involved.” McElroy began the process by asking whether the Jewish students in the department and the rabbis felt it was appropriate for, as McElroy states, “a diverse group of artists to tell a story that is steeped in Jewish culture and tradition, like Fiddler on the Roof.” The answer was a resounding yes.

The characters of ‘Fiddler’ come to life this weekend with the help of costume designer Beth Goldenberg.

Once the roles were cast, McElroy scheduled for the students a series of sessions with U-M professors and other educators, inviting them to meet with the students and address a wide range of topics. One of the guests was Mira Sussman, a Jewish educator and the resettlement resource development manager for Jewish Family Services of Washtenaw County. Along with Stella, Sussman spoke with the students about Jewish identity and history, explaining that “Judaism is not just an ethnicity or a religion, but it is also a way of life and a culture.” And while there are abundant examples of persecution throughout Jewish history, Sussman emphasized the joyfulness of her Jewish identity, noting “that trauma and discrimination is not the totality of our lived experience.” The session concluded with the teaching of the hora, the traditional circle dance that is a feature of many Jewish weddings and bar and bat mitzvah celebrations. Levinson told the students that the era depicted in Fiddler was a time of significant transition in Eastern Europe; many people were embracing revolutionary ideologies, he noted, and “rejecting tradition and rejecting religion and rejecting hierarchies of all kinds.” At the same time, Levinson asked the students to think about the fact that Fiddler reflects not just the era depicted in the musical, but the era in which it was written. He encouraged them to consider the musical, written in the early 1960s, as “an expression of postwar American Jewish culture.” Levinson pointed out that the themes explored in Fiddler – “conflicts between tradition and modernity, conflicts about gender, about the role of individual decision, love, [and] yearning in relation to the needs of the community” – resonate with people of many cultures worldwide.

In support of the performance, you can find a collection of Polish posters of Fiddler on the Roof from the last four decades on display through March 18 at Weiser Hall (Gallery Space, 5th Floor).

In another session, Stella gathered with the students to discuss Shabbat, sharing relevant passages from the Torah. “I wanted to ground them a little bit in the context of what the Jewish Sabbath is,” she says, “and how significant it is in the framework of Jewish life.” Stella also gave the students a sense of how Eastern European Jews in the time of Fiddler would have celebrated Shabbat. And finally, she shared with them her own Shabbat traditions, setting up a table with a tablecloth, her grandmother’s candlesticks, and a kiddush cup, the special receptacle for the wine that accompanies the blessing for Shabbat. Mikhail Krutikov, chair of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and the Preston R. Tisch Professor of Judaic Studies, met with the students via Zoom and painted a picture of life in the shtetl, sharing images, describing the marketplace, and explaining that Jews and Christians coexisted in these villages and surrounding areas. "Understanding the historical context adds depth and complexity to the performance and helps actors create more nuanced and multilayered characters,” Krutikov says. The process involved in preparing for this production of Fiddler was not without its challenges. But this work is essential, says McElroy. “How do we earn that right, to step into an experience that is not our own? By doing the work and bringing your empathy, bringing your humanity, and honoring [that story] through telling it in the fullest possible way,” he says.

U-M Humanities exhibition explores aging, identity and labor

The University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities presents “Beautiful By Night,” an exhibition by Chicago-based photographer, filmmaker, and visual artist James Hosking. The photo series and documentary project is about the veteran drag performers at Aunt Charlie’s Lounge, a small bar that has had an outsized influence on San Francisco’s LGBTQ+ community for more than twenty years.

Sadly, it is now the last gay bar in the area. The project captures the performers Donna Personna, Olivia Hart, and Collette LeGrande as they transform at home, backstage, and onstage. It is a candid exploration of aging, identity, and labor.

According to curator Amanda Krugliak, the timely work reveals not only the multiple dimensions of the protagonists, but also our skewed perceptions and value judgments in regards to aging, identity, class, and work.

“The artist and documentarian James Hosking lived in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood from 2010 to 2018, during which time he created the series of photographs and video Beautiful By Night. The exhibition presents intimate portraits of three long-time drag performers at Aunt Charlie’s Lounge, a small bar that has been so meaningful to San Franciso’s LGBTQ+ community for decades, and is now literally the last surviving gay bar in the neighborhood,” Krugliak said.

“The project is a deftly crafted and sensitive homage to performers Donna Personna, Olivia Hart, and Collette LeGrande. The images show us complicated, sometimes messy, multi-dimensional people in their environments, taking us from backstage to front and center, from the routine to the out of this world. Hosking’s focus on small details, the nuances of color, or the particularity of light, result in an expansive vision. As viewers, we feel the closeness of Hosking’s relationships to Donna, Olivia, and Collette, and, in turn, we also feel for them. They are the protagonists of their own stories, both everyday and extraordinary, and we are their rapt audience.”

Some of artist James Hosking’s photos featured as part of the U-M Institute for the Humanities exhibition, “Beautiful By Night.”

James Hosking’s portraiture explores underseen LGBTQ+ communities and subcultures. He often combines multiple images to explore sequentiality and juxtaposition. In recent work, he prints on fabric and acrylic, as well as collages with archival material, vernacular photos, and found textures.

His work was included in the 2020 exhibition Come to Your Census at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, and he had a multi-year collaboration with the city’s Tenderloin Museum that featured screenings, public programming, and a solo exhibition. His work has been screened internationally and has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Mother Jones, and many other publications.

He collaborated with National Book Award-winning writer William T. Vollmann on a portfolio about transgender women for Port magazine. His work has received support from the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and San Francisco’s Grants for the Arts program

Beautiful By Night will be on view through February 21, 2022 at the Institute for the Humanities Gallery. The Institute for the Humanities Gallery is located at located at 202 S. Thayer St., Ann Arbor, and is free and open to the public from 9 a.m.–5 p.m. weekdays.

Related Events:

Wednesday February 16, 6:30 PM joing the Institute for the Humanities for a special viewing of James Hosking’s film, “Beautiful By Night” with guests, protagonists, and queens Donna Personna and Olivia Hart in the Thayer Academic Building.

Ancestor garden: Community plants butterfly garden honoring Detroiters lost to COVID-19

DETROIT–Asia Hamilton showed up on a misty fall day to Detroit’s historic Virginia Park district to plant three flowers: one for her mother, one for her father, and another for her sister.

She was one of dozens of people that stopped by that day to ceremoniously plant blooms one-by-one, each in honor of loved ones who had passed away—most from COVID-19. Many were unable to have funerals during the pandemic.

It’s no surprise so many gathered. An early “hot spot” in the pandemic, the city of Detroit data indicate that more than 2,800 Detroiters have died of COVID-19 to date with more than 7,000 deaths likely related to the virus.

“Losing my mom last year was really shocking, especially to COVID,” said Hamilton. “And since then, I’ve really gotten into gardening. A garden is a place that offers peace, beauty and unity, and I thought it would be an amazing way to honor her and other family members I’ve lost.”

Venita Thompkins said that every memorial garden needs a soldier in it, so she planted a purple coneflower in honor of her brother, Irvin Thompkins, a Vietnam veteran who died from COVID-19 in May 2021.

“Every garden needs a soldier in it; this is for Irvin Thompkins,” said Venita Thompkins, referencing her brother, a Vietnam veteran who died from COVID-19 in May 2021, as she knelt down to plant a purple coneflower.

Samantha Pickering found out about the garden over the summer and had been looking forward to participating.

“I lost my dad to COVID April 1, 2020, so I came here to do something in memory of him. Having to grieve through isolation, we never had a funeral or memorial service, so I’m grateful for this opportunity.”

They all had responded to a call for community members to contribute to the planting of the “Ancestor Posterity Butterfly Garden,” located just outside the Joseph Walker Williams Center off of Rosa Parks Boulevard. The three-year-long project is the brainchild of University of Michigan alumnus Douglas Jones, a Detroit-based artist, activist and community organizer, and his co-collaborator and fellow artist Errin Whitaker.

Just before the stay-at-home orders were issued in March 2020, the project was commissioned and greenlit by the city of Detroit and Design Core Detroit. Though the plan was always to design a garden in the historic neighborhood, the pandemic and its devastating impact on the people of Detroit gave it more meaning as plans stopped and stalled but continued to move forward.

“It feels so great to be out here today, to see this come to life,” said Jones, who greeted each person stepping onto the plot with a cheery hello and a socially distanced elbow bump.

Jones, who has facilitated public art projects in several locations across Michigan including Detroit, Jackson, Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti and Grand Rapids, says the garden is an example of the brand of “public art” that he believes in.

“Through my work as an artist, I’m trying to shift the narrative of public art,” he said. “Most of it is consumptive, but I’ve always thought of it as something that requires participation and collaboration from the community, from the people that will enjoy it most.”

Errin Whitaker, a Detroit artist who collaborated with Jones to create the butterfly garden, created the ancestor posterity chair that is positioned in the middle of the garden.

Led by Jones and Whitaker, there were several people who helped bring the project to fruition, including Kyle Bartell, co-founder of Sit On It Detroit, who crafted the wooden benches that surround the garden and Akello Karamoko, a farmer at Keep Growing Detroit who grew the starter seeds for the native Michigan plants that make up the butterfly garden.

While Jones designed the garden, Whitaker created the “ancestor posterity chair” that is positioned in the middle of the plot, where it will eventually be enveloped in plants as the garden matures in the coming years. According to the artists, the chair was inspired by Wole Soyinka, a Nigerian playwright first introduced to Jones while taking undergrad classes at U-M, and his idea of a symbolic chair created for our ancestors, both past and future.

“My biggest influence with the chair was my grandmother. She had three daughters and three grandsons and she never thought we got enough rest as Black men,” Whitaker said. “I made the chair in quarantine, where I was able to sit still and rest. I thought about her a lot while making it, and I thought about all of the people, ancestors, that are continuing to transition during this time.”

Jones and Whitaker are currently working to create potential community programming related to the garden, and to create a plan with the community to continue its upkeep.

“We didn’t realize how powerful the idea would be pre-pandemic when we started planning the project,” Jones said. “It’s full of symbolism—hope, unity, renewal—and I know it will be cared for and nurtured by all of the people who showed up today to grieve and reflect. This is the kind of art that I want to do.”

Just outside the garden, a historic sign memorializes those who died during the events of the summer of 1967.

This is Michigan

$12M gift of Chinese calligraphy transforms Asian art collection at U-M Museum of Art

ANN ARBOR—The University of Michigan Museum of Art has received a gift of Chinese calligraphy from the family of Lo Chia-Lun valued at more than $12 million—the largest gift of art in the university’s history.

The Lo Chia-Lun Calligraphy Collection, donated by his daughter Jiu-Fong Lo Chang and her husband Kuei-sheng Chang, will transform the museum’s Asian art collection, adding an impressive breadth of works to an already stellar collection of Chinese paintings and ceramics.

Lo Chia-Lun (1897-1969) was a student leader in China’s “May Fourth Movement” and became a prominent government official in Nationalist China as well as a scholar, calligrapher, poet and president of two major universities—National Central University and Tsinghua University.

The Lo Chia-Lun Calligraphy Collection will contribute significantly to contemporary scholarship on Yuan and Ming dynasty calligraphy, and includes masterpieces by Yang Weizhen (1296-1370), Wang Shouren (1472-1529), Wen Zhengming (1470-1559) and Wang Duo (1592-1652), among others.

Yang Weizhen (1296 – 1370), Two Calligraphy of Poetry (detail), Yuan dynasty, handscroll in two sections, ink on silk, 8 ¼ x 13 ¼ inches (first section); 8 ¼ x 16 ½ inches (second section), Gift of Jiu-Fong Lo Chang and Kuei-sheng Chang, UMMA.

It also represents a major contribution to the study of Chinese cultural history, as it includes pieces from many cultural leaders of the early 20th century, including Cai Yuanpei (1868-1940), Chen Duxiu (1879-1942) and Shen Yinmo (1883-1971), as well as later artists Xu Beihong (1895-1953) and Zhang Daqian (1899-1983).

The collection preserves important evidence of cultural pursuits among these notable historical figures, while also reflecting the tastes and intellectual exchanges among leading intellectuals in the early 20th century.

The Lo family in Taiwan in 1963. Image courtesy of Elaine Chang.

The gift to UMMA is the result of a long relationship between the Lo family and U-M, and builds upon their history of philanthropy including previous gifts of Chinese art. Lo Chia-Lun’s wife, Djang Wei-djen (MA ’27), earned a master’s degree in political science at U-M on a Barbour Scholarship—one of U-M’s oldest and most prestigious awards, offering funding to female students from Asia and the Middle East since 1917.

Their daughters, Jiu-Fong Lo Chang (MA ’57, PhD candidate) and Jiu-Hwa Lo Upshur (MA ’61, PhD ’72), also attended graduate school at U-M as Barbour Scholars; their son-in-law, Kuei-sheng Chang (MA ’50, PhD ’55), earned a master’s degree and doctorate in geography from U-M. In the past decade, Jiu-Hwa Lo Upshur has endowed a scholarship in her father’s name at the Rackham Graduate School and created internship endowments at UMMA.

“This gift honors not only the legacy of my father, but it also recognizes our family’s deep roots at Michigan and our gratitude for the opportunities U-M afforded us at a time when few Chinese students had the privilege of studying abroad,” Jiu-Fong Lo Chang said of the calligraphy collection.

Wen Zhengming (1470 – 1559), Twelve Poems (detail), Ming dynasty, album of twenty-six leaves, ink on paper, 9 ¼ x 6 ⅛ inches (each page), Gift of Jiu-Fong Lo Chang and Kuei-sheng Chang, UMMA.

UMMA will partner with U-M faculty and global scholars to research and interpret the works in the collection for major exhibitions and collections installations in the coming years.

“The Lo Chia-Lun Collection will have a major impact on U-M and UMMA, in terms of both research and scholarship on Chinese calligraphy and our ongoing outreach to Michigan’s large Chinese community,” said Ann Lin, the Lieberthal-Rogel Professor of Chinese Studies and director of the U-M Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies.

The calligraphy collection numbers 72 pieces, dating to the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties and the Republican Period, including some of the finest examples of Chinese calligraphic works outside of China. The gift also includes several seals, ink stones and other objects from Chinese literati culture.

“The addition of the Lo Chia-Lun Collection will be transformative for UMMA’s Asian art program,” said UMMA Director Christina Olsen. “It will significantly deepen UMMA’s holdings of Chinese calligraphy and will add depth and perspective to other UMMA artworks, enabling a more complete portrayal of Chinese art for museum visitors. UMMA is extremely grateful to continue the legacy of the Lo family and to share this rich and beautiful collection with the world.”

It’s all there in black & white

Close up and personal

Photographer. Documentarian. Truth teller.

Robin Fader, BA ’78, is all those things.

She also is female, 65, and a type 1 diabetic. So she probably should have taken cover in early 2020 when COVID-19 ravaged the populace and shut down the streets of Washington, D.C. But this multi-Emmy Award-winning producer and photographer has long been a student of human nature. Her experience in broadcast news, social work, and psychology compelled her to get outside. She needed to document humanity’s response to the global pandemic.

Armed with curiosity, courage, and a camera, Fader got a surprising wake-up call. The nation’s busy capital had become an urban wasteland. She realized she had little to fear from the invisible virus or the people who may have had it. For 100 days straight (and beyond), she ventured into the abandoned streets to document the eeriness of lockdown.

“I think the first time I really cried was when I came upon an empty playground blocked with caution tape,” she says. “And that just killed me because I thought, ‘This is life for children now. What is this going to do to their lives?’”

Little did she know the worst was yet to come.

No answers

Robin Fader, Washington, D.C.

It’s mind-boggling to reconcile that COVID-19, George Floyd’s murder, the U.S. presidential election, and the deaths of Representative John Lewis and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg happened within a single year. And then, just six days into 2021, the country experienced a domestic assault on the nation’s Capitol.

But there it is – in black and white.

Fader’s photos appear in the new documentary photography book 2020 UNMASKED (2021). Her work chronicles the year’s historic events as they unfolded in D.C. Fellow photographers Susan Baggett and Victor A. Mirontschuk photographed events in their home cities of Boston and New York, respectively. They, along with photo editor Ari Espay, let the streets tell the story of that tumultuous year, as three urban cityscapes devolved first into desolation and then chaos. Fader says the collaboration among the team was so strong it helped them cope with the burdens and hardships of COVID.

Take your shot

At 350 pages, 2020 UNMASKED is a vivid historical document that feels at once too soon and not soon enough.

The proximity to the action is breathtaking, a little frightening, and something you won’t see on the network or cable news, “because I was there when they weren’t,” Fader says. “This is a different lens, a different way of seeing everything that happened.

“As a street photographer, you have to remain present in the moment; you don’t want to keep putting your head down to your camera to see what you have,” she continues. “And with the protest stuff, you have to work very fast. You have to be acutely aware of what’s happening. If someone starts to yell, that could spark an altercation — and that altercation could turn into something much larger.”

Fortunately, people in the street tended to look out for the little white woman with a camera.

Uncluttered

Each of the photographers submitted an essay for the book to contextualize their experience. Internationally acclaimed photographers Joe McNally and Ira Block provided the introduction and final thoughts. Danielle Hernandez was the graphic designer. Additional commentary comes from a teacher, a doctor, an activist, a protester, an artist, a college student, a restaurant owner, and a food distributor. Images are identified on the page only by city, with details in an index at the end of the book. Espay reviewed thousands of photographs by all three photographers and selected a few images that benefited from color. He used them sparingly.

“When you strip away color from the photo, you’re left with the essence and emotion of the image without all the clutter of the color,” Fader says. It was the same with the decision to leave out captions. “We wanted the images to remain pure and not be distracted by any text or verbiage.”

Stand down

One of Fader’s most impactful images, taken at night on Dec. 12, is a horizontal shot that crosses the book’s spine and bleeds to the edge of each page. It captures a line of metro police weighed down by bulky riot gear. The officers’ shapeless forms span the width of K Street in the heart of D.C.’s business district as fuzzy white globes of light float overhead. The menace is palpable.

To make this dramatic photograph, Fader had to stand in the middle of the street, facing those officers. They provided a woefully inadequate buffer between MAGA supporters (behind the police) and anti-MAGA protesters (behind her). Violence could erupt at any second.

“Afterwards, I was thinking, ‘Was I mad to be there?’” Fader says, “but I felt…I felt no fear whatsoever. And I would do it again in a heartbeat.”

Stay with the shot

Robin Fader, Washington, D.C.

“I could hear Ari’s voice in my head: ‘Stay. Don’t move. Don’t move. Work that moment.’”Working with Espay in the editing process reinforced a lesson easily forgotten in the heat of the action. During a July 3 rally in Freedom Plaza, Fader once again encountered a police line that separated opposing protesters. She trained her camera on a woman obscured behind a Trump flag. The woman seemed to be hiding, reluctant to be photographed.

Eventually, one of the woman’s eyes appeared, looking directly at Fader’s lens. She got the shot, which includes an African American man, mask down and mouth open, shouting at a police officer. He is wearing a “Black Lives Matter” shirt. The officer appears resigned to the juxtaposition of extreme opposites.

“You have the BLM folks and the Trump people critical of the police because neither side feels like they’re getting justice,” Fader says. “It’s very, very upsetting.”

Photos like that illustrate how complex police reform is in modern America, she says. The image appears on one page of 2020 UNMASKED. On the opposite page, an African American woman with a baby on her hip holds a sign that reads: “Fear Less Love More.”

“That was one of many portraits I took at the ‘Black Lives Matter Memorial Fence’ by Black Lives Plaza,” Fader says. “The fence surrounded the White House and for four months was a place for people to place their art and protest messages. It was was often Ground Zero for protests by white supremacists.”

Fader befriended the two women, formerly strangers, who protected the fence 24/7. She is now working on a documentary about them.

Transformed

Victor A. Mirontschuk, New York.

The photographer claims she doesn’t chase danger, though she often found herself in dangerous situations.

On the night of Jan. 5, 2021, she was out photographing at Black Lives Matter Plaza. At about 10 p.m., word came down that a crowd of 200 Proud Boys was working its way toward the plaza. This time, seriously concerned for her safety, Fader asked to be escorted to her car about two blocks away. She had to take a circuitous route to dodge clashes between Trump supporters and Trump protesters, and it took about 2.5 hours to get there, she says.

Other times Fader found hope in the least likely of places, including a 16th Street food distribution center. Many people, mostly Hispanic and non-English speaking, waited for hours, only to be turned away when the supply was exhausted. Not to be stopped by a language barrier, Fader returned with a sign that read in Spanish: “I want to take your picture to show others how important it is to donate food.” Even people who had waited to no avail stopped to interact with her.

“Donate money to a food bank,” Fader says to anyone who feels unable to solve this problem. “That’s the biggest, the best, the most powerful thing you could do.”

A splash of color

Susan Baggett, Boston.

After “months and months of go, go, go,” Fader, Baggett, and Mirontschuk settled in with Espay for the arduous process of editing and indexing all the images for publication. The catharsis was intense, Fader says. To page through the book is to flash back to one of the cruelest and most challenging periods in our country’s history. It comes with a bookmark because the creators anticipate people will need breaks between viewings.

While going through every photograph she provided for the book, “I just broke down and cried because I realized there was so much pain, so much hardship, so many unexplainable things that I saw with my eyes and my camera,” Fader says.

She believes 2020 UNMASKED will serve as a long-lasting historical document and teaching tool. All profits are earmarked for Statement Arts, a New York City nonprofit that helps at-risk high school students enter college.

“I hope the book makes us feel more compassionate in every situation we encounter,” Fader says. “Maybe that’s the benefit of looking at hard-to-look-at pictures. You have to think about them. And maybe you will think, ‘What can I do differently going forward?”

Fader found one possible answer among the masked children she photographed playing in a rowdy schoolyard.

“Their joy and laughter were abundant,” she says. “And it was fabulous to see that nothing was stopping them. I would say, ‘I want to see you smiling with your eyes. Come on, show it to me.’ And you could tell when they were smiling, even with their masks. Seeing those kids was a wonderful thing.”

Henry Ford’s ghost confronts complex legacy in new film by U-M professor

ANN ARBOR—Why did you undermine Edsel? How did the “working man’s friend” become the enemy of Labor? Why did you hate Jews?

Writer/Director/Composer, Andy Kirshner

These are three of the 10 questions posed to the ghost of Henry Ford in a new film produced, written and directed by Andy Kirshner, an associate professor at the University of Michigan Stamps School of Art & Design and School of Music, Theatre & Dance.

Part documentary, part biopic, 10 Questions for Henry Ford follows Ford’s character, played by actor John Lepard, on a journey through the modern-day, post-industrial landscape of southeast Michigan, juxtaposing it with historical footage and photographs from 1914-41, Ford’s period of greatest public influence. The film also features several dance sequences choreographed by Debbie Williams, reflecting on Ford’s passion for “traditional” music and dance.

The 67-minute-long feature-length film is set to premiere Nov. 6 at the Ojai Film Festival and will be available on-demand virtually through the festival’s website to national audiences Nov. 9-14.

To piece together the film, Kirshner poured through Ford’s personal notebooks, letters and documents, as well as newspaper clips, interviews, photographs, video footage and oral histories. He found them in various historical archives, including the National Archives, the Benson Ford Research Center at the Henry Ford Museum, the U-M Bentley Historical Library and the Rabbi Leo M. Franklin Archives at Temple Beth El.

“The presentation of it is very unique because the dialogue is completely based on words and ideas expressed by Ford,” said Kirshner, who began research for the film in 2016. “In some cases, we’re ‘guessing’ what he would have said based on how he is documented to have responded to personal and historical events throughout his life, and in others, we hear his words verbatim.”

It opens with Ford’s ghost (Lepard) watching footage from his own public memorial viewing at Greenfield Village in 1947, where he comments that he could have made the process for the mile-long line of mourners waiting to see his casket “much more efficient.”

The scene, which uses actual historical footage Kirshner found in the National Archives, is a technique that he utilizes throughout the film. As Ford (Lepard) glances toward a clearing at his Fair Lane estate in Dearborn, the focus shifts to a clip—or memory—of him there with his grandchildren and wife, Clara; as he approaches the Ford River Rouge Plant, footage of the violent Battle of the Overpass, where members of the United Auto Workers clashed with Ford Motor Co. security guards, flashes onto the screen.

Ford Motor Company Servicemen beat Richard Frankensteen, a UAW organizer, during the “Battle of the Overpass”, Dearborn, MI.

Scenes were shot over the course of three years at various locations in southeast Michigan, including Greenfield Village in Dearborn, the Edsel and Eleanor Ford House in Grosse Pointe Shores, the Highland Park Model T plant, the remaining Willow Run Bomber Plant building in Ypsilanti, and the site of Ford’s first workshop at 58 Bagley Ave. in downtown Detroit. Viewers will also notice Detroit scenes shot inside the People Mover, outside of Michigan Central Station and at the Detroit Institute of Arts, where Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry Murals—commissioned by Ford’s late son, Edsel—can still be found.

The picture that Kirshner paints of Ford is brutally honest. At the heart of his exploration into the American icon is a series of inflammatory anti-Semitic articles that he published in the 1920s through his personal newspaper, The Dearborn Independent. Blaming Jews for everything from World War I and economic depression to short skirts and the corrupting influence of Jazz, Ford’s publications quickly spread around the world—and to Germany, where they became enormously popular. Adolf Hitler praised Ford as “the leader of our fascist movement in America,” and awarded him a medal.

“On one hand, you have this person who accepted a medal from one of the worst people in human history, and on the other hand, he described himself as a pacifist,” said Kirshner, who also composed the music for the film. “In fact, there is existing correspondence between Henry Ford and Gandhi.”

The ghost of Henry Ford (John Lepard) kills time on Detroit’s “People Mover”

Another theme explored throughout the film is Ford’s relationship with his son, Edsel, whom he was close to as a child, but increasingly estranged from as an adult. According to Kirshner, oral histories in the archives showed that the two grew further apart as time went by, especially as their differences in politics, management style and personality came to light.

“During the years that I worked on this film, I was constantly struck by how similar that world was to the one we find ourselves in today, he said. “As is the case in our current historical moment, Ford’s era was a period of enormous technological and social change, marked by political demagoguery, anti-immigrant exclusionism, economic inequality and domestic terrorism.”

The lingering ghost of Henry Ford wanders Detroit in 2021

As the film progresses, each of the “10 questions” is posed to Ford’s ghost as he encounters ruins of his former factories, the resilient beauty of the Rouge River, the violent legacy of his own words and insistent memories of his son.

According to Kirshner, each “answer” is layered and complicated.

“The film is a musical-visual-choreographic rumination on the ways in which the literal and figurative ghosts of the past still haunt us,” he said. “I believe that we need to deconstruct the myths and the icons of American history in order to explore the complexity of these people who have been presented to us only as heroes or villains—and also to fully understand ourselves.”

‘The Dude’ marks 25 years of innovation and creativity

While the technology inside the James and Anne Duderstadt Center has certainly changed since 1996, one thing has not: The center remains an innovative hub where collaboration, experimentation and creativity flourish.

“The Dude,” as it is affectionately known, is famous for its vast collection of the latest technological tools. Those tools — and some of the work they’ve helped produce — will be on display during a weeklong 25th anniversary celebration that begins Oct. 4.

James Hilton, vice provost for academic innovation and dean of libraries, said the Duderstadt Center is one of the busiest, most dynamic spaces at U-M. With more than 400 computers spread over 250,000 square feet, it is the university’s largest computing space. It has several studios, laboratories, performance venues, and gathering and study spaces.

As many as 6,000 people visited daily before the pandemic.

Prospective students explore the Michigan Immersive Digital Experience Nexus, or MIDEN, the Duderstadt Center’s immersive reality space, as part of an “Explore Engineering” event in 2019. (Photo by Joseph Xu, College of Engineering)

“I think it’s a jewel,” said Hilton, who also is an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and professor of information. “I’m not aware of any other place in higher education where students can walk in, and if they’re willing to put in some time (to learn how to use the equipment), they can have access to tools that students at other universities don’t have access to.”

The deans of the schools on North Campus proposed the center in the early 1990s as a way to provide students with access to rapidly evolving technologies. At the time, the internet was relatively new, and the transition from physical books to digital libraries was just beginning.

Originally named the Media Union, the facility was envisioned as a technology-intensive innovation commons where students, faculty and staff from multiple disciplines could gather to create, invent and design things.

James Duderstadt, U-M’s president at the time, played a key role in securing the state funding that made the project a reality. He and Dan Atkins, who served as interim dean of the College of Engineering and later as founding dean of the School of Information, made several trips to Lansing to convince the governor and key legislators to provide $45 million for the project.

“When the Media Union finally opened its doors in 1996, there were probably fewer than a dozen people on the campus who understood what it was,” Duderstadt wrote in a report about the history of the center. “But the students rapidly learned, and within a month it became the most popular facility in the university.”

Duderstadt said the facility sent a powerful message: that the university and the state of Michigan prioritized investment in “creating art, creating technology, creating the future.”

In 2004, the Board of Regents approved renaming the Media Union complex the Duderstadt Center in recognition of Duderstadt and his wife, Anne. James Duderstadt, president emeritus and University Professor of Science and Engineering, still has an office there.

Student Will Stanton’s video shoot thesis project included spiral-shaped netting, which gave the piece an ethereal feel. (Photo by Kathi Reister, Duderstadt Center)

From the beginning, the Duderstadt Center has given members of the U-M community access to the newest generations of information technology and digital media tools, as well as expert support. Access to costly and complex resources, and the training on how to use them, is available for free.

The technology is refreshed and upgraded often. Currently, the center’s leadership is working with a number of schools and colleges to acquire a BigRep Studio G2 3D printer, a large machine that offers 10 times the build capacity of most standard 3D printers, with several available materials to fit various applications.

Many of the center’s resources are geared toward the curricula of the schools on North Campus: the College of Engineering; the School of Music, Theatre & Dance; the A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning; and the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design.

An executive committee made up of North Campus deans and the dean of the School of Information works closely with Hilton and Interim Chief Operating Officer Kathleen Bauer to shape the center’s vision and priorities.

The Duderstadt Center is home to the Art, Architecture and Engineering Library, the College of Engineering Computer Aided Engineering Network, the Digital Media Commons, Arts Engine, the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities, the Center for Entrepreneurship and the Millennium Project.

Alec Gallimore, Robert J. Vlasic Dean of Engineering, said when the Duderstadt opened, it housed the college’s first computing cluster, a very early prototype video conferencing system, and early virtual reality and visualization studios.

The center still provides important resources for engineering students today. The Michigan Electric Racing team recently used it to create a video to launch its latest car, and mechanical engineering classes have done course design reviews there in virtual reality.

A motion capture demonstration is filmed in the Duderstadt Center Video Studio while staff monitor and record sound and video content from the video studio control room. (Photo courtesy of Duderstadt Center staff)

“As a space where students could have access to technologies that were beyond their reach elsewhere, it was and still is a place to help students explore what’s possible,” said Gallimore, the Richard F. and Eleanor A. Towner Professor of Engineering, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and professor of aerospace engineering.

Along with hundreds of computers with advanced software, the center has many unique studios and labs. The Visualization Studio has advanced tools and resources for creating extended-reality, augmented-reality and virtual-reality experiences. The Fabrication Studio contains 3D printers, a laser cutter, a CNC router, 3D scanners, dedicated computers and electronics workbenches.

State-of-the-art audio studios contain equipment that meets or exceeds current recording industry standards. A 4,200-square-foot, broadcast-quality production studio is available for the video recording and livestreaming of performances and events.

“It has leading-edge technology,” Hilton said. “It has a huge sound stage. When it was first built, it was said to be the largest sound stage east of the Mississippi outside of New York City limits.”

Visitors will be able to check out the studio and other features of the Duderstadt Center during the 25th-anniversary celebration from Oct. 4-8. Several special activities are planned for the open house-style event, including building tours, film showings and demonstrations of 3D and virtual reality technology. Some activities require advanced registration.

Reflecting on the past 25 years, Duderstadt said he’s proud of the people who had the vision to make the Duderstadt Center a reality and the students, faculty and staff who continue to carry that vision forward.

Hilton said while the center’s technology may look different today, its mission does not.

“What I think is interesting about the 25th anniversary is because of its focus on innovation and collaboration, it’s as relevant to North Campus and U-M more generally today as it was the day it opened,” he said.

This story was originally published by The University Record.

U-M professor releases never-before-seen photos of 9/11 ahead of 20th anniversary

ANN ARBOR—There are photos of bystanders looking up in disbelief, exasperated first responders standing among the rubble and scores of people running from the wreckage as the smoke trails behind them. There are even some who look as if they’re going about an ordinary day—riding a bicycle or on rollerblades—though complete devastation surrounds them.

In a pre-social media era, we watched many of the apocalyptic scenes unfold on our TV screens or in newspapers as two hijacked airplanes crashed into the north and south towers of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

A new photographic documentary released this week by Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer and University of Michigan professor David Turnley offers new close-up encounters of the moments before both towers fell, and the immediate aftermath.

Turnley is a professor at the U-M Residential College and the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design. For the past 40 years, he has covered most of the world’s major events, uprisings and wars—including the Persian Gulf War, the struggle to end apartheid, revolutions in Eastern Europe and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, to name a few.

David Turnley is an award-winning photographer and U-M professor who documented the first responders on Sept. 11, 2001. Photo courtesy David Turnley.

“It was a gorgeous blue sky morning, and I was in the shower on West 10th Street in New York’s West Village when I heard what sounded like a train wreck. I moved to the city in the late ’90s after 20 years of covering war all over the world,” wrote Turnley, in a recent Instagram post. “After getting dressed for an appointment, I walked out the door to see the first twin tower in flames. I grabbed my cameras—and 20 rolls of film—and by the time I returned to head down to the World Trade Center, another plane had just hit the second tower. War had followed me.”

On that day, Turnley rushed to the site just two blocks away from his home, where he photographed the collapse of both towers before heading into the rubble with the first firefighters and police officers that responded to the scene.

According to Turnley, many of the photos he is releasing as part of his new video—set to Bruce Springstein’s “Lift Me Up”—have remained in his personal archive until this week. He is also posting a six-day series on Instagram (@davidturnley), where he’ll release 60 more photos leading up to the 20th anniversary of the attacks.

“I am posting this work to honor—20 years later—all those who lost their lives and those who risked their lives to help.”