Roger J. Martin: 1970s Cass Corridor

This rarely exhibited and never before published work drew from Martin's personal archive of a thousand negatives, shot while he was a student at Wayne State University in and around Detroit's Cass Corridor during the 1970s.

Martin turned his camera on the neighborhood itself — stoops, kitchens, factory shift changes, kids in the street, drag performers and burlesque acts at the Gold Dollar, groups of friends, working families getting by. The Corridor at that time was one of the most socially dense pockets of Detroit, and Martin photographed it from the inside, without judgment or spectacle.

"Through these images, I hope to transport the viewer to a time and era of Detroit's Cass Corridor that is now long gone," Martin said, "to see people where they are and let them describe their situation."

The exhibition at The Barbershop paired vintage silver gelatin prints made by Martin more than forty years ago with new archival pigment prints produced from the original negatives.

This exhibition also celebrated the launch of the inaugural issue of LEDGER: Photographic Journal, a quarterly publication by The Barbershop, where Martin's work was published for the first time.