Julia Reyes Taubman arrived in Detroit area 12 years ago, having lived most of her life in distant—and considerably less fraught—urban enclaves in New York and Texas. With a background in commercial real estate, she was hardly the sort of person you might expect to fall in love with the massive, rotting hulks of America’s industrial past. But she did just that, taking her camera in hand and beginning a seven-year project of architectural archaeology that reaches fruition this month with the release of Detroit: 138 Square Miles, a brawny book from Distributed Art Publishers. Not content to dwell on all-too-well-known landmarks like the city’s former train station, Taubman went further afield, capturing abandoned schools, an old boathouse on Belle Isle, and the industrial wastes of Delray and Zug Island. She talked to Surface about her photos and the little-known side of the town that inspired them.

There are 400-plus pages of photos here. How many were you choosing from?
I took 35,000 pictures in all. Marsha Miro, who founded the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit with me—and who also was an art critic for the Detroit News—helped me throughout the whole process to edit the photos. And I worked with Lorraine Wild, of [L.A.-based design firm] Green Dragon, who art-directed the book. I’m so incredibly proud of it, but the reason it looks the way it does is because of Marsha and Lorraine.

Ford's Highland Park Plant, craneway. Photo: Julia Reyes Taubman.

How did your fascination with Detroit and its abandoned buildings begin?
I saw the old Packard plant one day in May 2005. I was with a bunch of people from New York and Detroit, and a friend of mine who’s an artist wanted to show us around. When I saw the inside, I couldn’t believe that I’d had no awareness of this, or that nobody I knew had ever talked about it. I couldn’t believe that every single person didn’t talk about this all day long! Visually it was so astounding, and I couldn’t think of anything else for a long time.

And then you just started packing a camera everywhere you went?
I’d always had a decent camera, but then [after moving to Detroit], I just kept taking pictures. And then I actually looked at them for the first time, and I got really into the subject I was shooting. These are meant to be documentary photos—not perfect light conditions, just seeing as much as you can possibly see. Over seven years my cameras have gotten a lot better. The Nikon D700 was the best. First I had a Leica, but you need different cameras for different things.

Amelia Earhart Middle School, Meathe, Kessler & Associates (1964). Photo: Julia Reyes Taubman.

You have two opening essays in the book, one from novelist Elmore Leonard, the other from scholar Jerry Herron. Herron in particular talks about how this book is different from others about Detroit. Were you conscious of trying to do something new?
There are some really interesting books about Detroit out right now. None of them really had an effect on mine just because I’ve been working on it for so long. I think that anybody who documents the city, who comes and takes pictures here, is great.

Detroit: 138 Square Miles by Julia Reyes Taubman
Title image: Vigo Street and Wesson Avenue, Detroit. Photo: Julia Reyes Taubman.