HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF (2010)
Struck by the irony between Detroit mayor David Bing's recent initiative to raze more than 10,000 vacant homes in the city of Detroit during his four-year term and the translation of Detroit's motto, I designed these postcards.
Printed on a Vandercook proof press at the San Francisco Center for the Book.
The back of the card reads:
In the spring of 2010, Mayor David Bing began his ambitious four-year project to raze more than 10,000 vacant houses in the city of Detroit. One proposal under consideration recommends converting the thousands of cleared lots into urban farmland.
It was more than 200 years earlier when Father Gabriel Richard, a local pastor, penned Detroit's famed, if not ominous, motto. He wrote it after the 1805 fire that decimated the city and destroyed the school he opened a year before the blaze.
Speramus meliora; resurget cineribus. We hope for better things; it will rise from the ashes.
Father Richard is also credited with bringing the first printing press to Detroit.
