Feral Church #2 by James Griffioen

I'm just one of about 800,000 people still living in the city of Detroit, Michigan, the nation's 11th most-populated city. Because of the events of the last half-century, this is a city that journalists and academics love to examine and study. In focusing on the sensational, they often concoct maddening generalizations about what they've found here. In the time I've lived in Detroit, I've come to realize that the most sensational claims and the public perception they create often have little to do with the day-to-day reality of being a Detroiter.
– From Yes, there are Grocery Stores in Detroit, written by today's multi-talented edition-maker James Griffioen.

Today's edition—Feral Church #2—is our third photograph from James' series documenting the unlikely beauty of nature's creeping triumph over Detroit's urban landscape. Detroit is a city whose image has been shaped for me by a variety of writers and artists—from Philip Levine to Karolina Karlic to Jeffrey Eugenides to Julie Mehretu to Andrew Moore, and yes, James Griffioen, whose documents and diaries of his life there have provided the most comprehensive account of its challenges and oft-overlooked riches.

My most recent (and somewhat surprising) literary encounter with the Motor City was via Patti Smith's memoir Just Kids. I didn't know that she'd lived in Detroit in the 80s and 90s (and maybe she still does? A cursory scour of the interwebs didn't yield an answer to that question) but it wasn't hard to connect her to the city I've come to know through all these great artists. Finding the heart and soul and beauty in a place or thing that most people find ugly and/or frightening is a defining aspect of the life she's lived and the art she's made, so it makes perfect sense that Detroit was a place that she made a home.