Jim Griffioen photographs city houses slowly being reclaimed by the wild.
James D. Griffioen is an endlessly talented guy.
A few years ago he left behind his career as a lawyer to take on another challenge—being a full-time at-home dad to his two gorgeous kids, Juniper and Gram, whose lives and adventures he documents on his blog, Sweet Juniper. Jim also works as a photographer and freelance writer, and is so great at all of it that it’s hard to pin down exactly what his true calling may be.
A central theme in Jim’s blogs—regardless of whether they’re about his adventures with Juniper and Gram, his talented and powerful wife, Wood, or one of his many creative projects—is the city he and Wood moved back to about a decade ago: Detroit.
And we’re not talking about the fancy schmancy suburbs like Grosse Pointe or Birmingham. No, Wood and Jim are among the many young families who’ve become activists and advocates on behalf of the once-powerful thriving metropolis, which had been left to wither after the auto industry began moving overseas in the 1980s. Since they moved back, Wood and Jim have been central figures in creating a community in the heart of a city that still has a lot of life left in it.
One of the most intriguing and unique aspects of Jim’s work as a photographer has been his Feral Houses project. On the Feral Houses blog, Jim explains how he began taking photos of abandoned homes around Detroit that were being taken back into the wild by the plant life surrounding them.
I’ve seen “feral” used to describe dogs, cats, even goats. But I have wondered if it couldn’t also be used to describe certain houses in Detroit. Abandoned houses are really no big deal here. Some estimate that there are as many as 10,000 abandoned structures at any given time, and that seems conservative. But for a few beautiful months during the summer, some of these houses become “feral” in every sense: they disappear behind ivy or the untended shrubs and trees planted generations ago to decorate their yards. The wood that framed the rooms gets crushed by trees rooted still in the earth. The burnt lime, sand, gravel, and plaster slowly erode into dust, encouraged by ivy spreading tentacles in its endless search for more sunlight.
[…]These houses are reverting to a wild state, as from domestication, a word derived itself from domesticus (the Latin for belonging to the domus, or house). Now these houses are feralis. They belong only to the dead.
The result is a breathtaking collection of photographs that remind us that even the most powerful structures in our lives ultimately belong only to the earth.
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See more photos at JamesGriffioen.net
Get to know Jim and his family at Sweet Juniper… Here are a few favorites: The Birth of Gram, The Busy Bee Garden Project, and check out Gram’s mind-blowingly awesome Halloween costume, too.
about eight years ago, i thought about buying a property in an almost ghost town in canada – i cant remember where. it had about 20 residents left – wonderful solitude (the uk is not like the usa, houses get more expensive the further they are into the countryside)
amazing, especially 2nd from last photo – what a beautiful house. reminds me (im in tiny uk) just how large some countries are, that neighbourhoods or even whole towns can just be abandoned and their existence soon forgotten
Used to fix windows in Detroit. Good neighborhoods like Palmer Park and Outer Drive and some of my best stuff went up in ’67. When we were fixing up FHA repos for showing, it was heartbreaking to have somebody introduce himself as the block captain and ask if somebody was moving in. Vacant houses and the “broken window” theory were linked. We usually didn’t know about moving in; the realtors liked to keep the weather out, and kids and windows in vacant houses didn’t mix well, so we were back to some frequently. My guess is not enough folk were… Read more »
So strange to see this… There was an Antebellum Home made of marble near the marble mining towns of Tate, and White , Ga that was forgotten and soon overgrown by foliage and the dreaded Kudzu. I think they found it again by accident 50 or so years later… Cox Corp bought an entire neighborhood from families I went to High School with for an office complex, then abandoned it for many years. It was incredibly eerie to party in the old houses of friends in a neighborhood I spent my youth in. Cops left us alone because they couldn’t… Read more »
Wicked cool. Thanks!