- All you need is a pen, your hand, and your imagination to make anything come to life, right?

to make anything come to life, right?

There's really no limit to what you can can put on paper.

There's really no limit to what you can can put on paper.

You could create a sci-fi environment where your characters are flying.

Just because you imagined it and you put it down on paper and there's really no limit because of that.

You can do whatever you want.

And that's what I like about animation.

I was a very shy person and I just felt that I could express myself better through drawing and through other characters.

I struggled a lot with comparison in school all the time.

And I just always, by default, felt like I wasn't good enough.

I'm not as cool.

I just like to draw.

I don't really like doing anything other than getting my homework done so I could just draw my comic book at home.

You don't have to have these tools to get started 'cause it's really all about getting started, right?

Each drawing is a frame which makes the character move.

If you wanna be an animator, just have sticky notes and you just have one drawing per frame and you flip them just like in traditional animation.

I mean, sticky notes are really small but still, you can learn the principles of animation like squash and stretch, anticipation, solid drawing, all of these rules that you can learn from books, from the internet, you can practice by using simple tools like that.

you can practice by using simple tools like that.

And then if you're able to get the drawing tools like a tablet or a computer, then you'll just be 10 times like you'll just be ready to just do like you'll just be ready to just do your whole animated short film basically.

I never thought that I would be breaking barriers.

I just knew I'm doing this for me.

And I wanna do it for a living.

So I'm gonna have to be in these spaces.

And if I do break barriers in the meantime, then great.

If I can make a way for other black girls, or any women of color, or just women in general come into the industry, then that's great.

And I encourage them to do it for themselves so that they're happy regardless.

(satellite beeping) - [Newscaster] Breaking news, "White Devils Gone Mad in the Last Days of Obama."

(upbeat dramatic music) Stirring tea cups, trying box braids, quoting MLK, making speeches, bringing guns into the Sheriff's department, blackout drunk downtown, jogging barefoot in Cass Corridor all Winter, putting quinoa on pizza, cashing you outside, building the wall and paying for it!

Knitting pussy hats, orgasming over Tomahawk missiles, encouraging everyone to give him a chance.

Ignoring white supremacists in the cabinet, in the Oval, at the State House with semi-automatic rifles, mowing people down on the streets, issuing memorandum, insisting black women be fired for naming their most obvious wounds, not putting up a fight, sliding into the DMs, bombing the desert, pulling doctors off planes, ripping families apart, debating the validity of ripping families apart, reporting live, recalling Watergate, shuffling papers, stacking money, approaching the singularity, denying climate change, hunting rhinos, shooting up mosques, shooting up clinics, shooting up so much now, it's an epidemic.

Observing the universe accelerating, discovering new livable planets, making this one untenable.

Colonizing continents and demanding more.

Studying their own lack of empathy.

Stroking their ivory tower, hacking the election, discounting votes, poisoning Flint, poisoning Standing Rock, flying high in friendly skies.

Brexiting, brokering more new stadiums, wearing the Confederate flag as a cape, demolishing public schools, failing their own tests, declaring facts alternative, jumping at the chance, playing Devil's advocate, silencing the witnesses, paying off the accusers, keeping the cameras rolling, resisting until further notice, giving me a name, backstabbing quietly, singing the praises of, kneeling before, pretending to, devoting themselves, going ham, fleeking for free, dabbing for the cameras, shining their cars up, oiling their guns, saying nigga on record or along to it, painting their faces with burnt cork, activating coal, fracking the planet, recasting Asian characters, feigning ignorance, wearing headdresses, co-opting movements, building more new jails, pardoning the sheriff, blocking their relatives, giving birth to me, stirring her teacup, giving me language, teaching me how to say "no" I don't trust you with my best interests or my worst.

- [Sabrina] The Blackbird Mothers Series, gratitude, grace and grief.

Thinking about mothers who have to bury their children, no matter what ages they are, how they prepare themselves for the burial of their children.

I am holding three feathers that represent the children that I birthed.

Those that I've fed, those that I've given advice to, given a place to sleep.

How I would be if I lost any of those children.

In this process of oil painting, I'm just taking my time and thinking about anguish, and thinking about grace, and thinking about my grandmother who lost my mother in 1979, who was 30.

You can look on a mother's face from another country and understand grief without language.

The idea of I want you to be empathetic to this being, even though it's me.

It can be any of us.

I lost my father recently to the pandemic.

Death is a cycle.

It's the ending.

The racial pandemic, the viral pandemic, constant death that's happening around us, we don't have to help death, it's gonna come naturally.

My other process, because I know people won't stop killing, is the idea of healing, or illness, and understanding what that means.

Do we call ourselves sick?

You know, people who take other people's lives are not well.

They'll, they'll be a cabinet somewhere where I've left some things and some messages that say here take this.

I have some medicine for your illness.

You can take it if you want.

And if you don't it's okay, but it's here.

Here it is, the apothecary.

And I want you to know that there are ways that you can heal yourself if you recognize that you need healing.

Just thinking about mind medicine, music medicine movement medicine, all of those things, just being on this planet and honoring other beings who are here.

We are the medicine that we're seeking.

And, so, hopefully that message will be delivered until I decide there's something else that I need to say.

- How did I start writing?

It was my mother.

I read a lot when I was a kid and mama one day said, "You read so much, you should try to write one."

And I did.

And I liked it so much, I kept at it.

I'm Zig Zag Claybourne.

Let me tell you a story.

(phaser beaming) Zig to Detroit, one to beam up.

(communicator clicking) I love sci-fi because nothing else lets you use your imagination in quite the same way.

And for me, imagination is power.

From the Twilight Zone to Star Trek to Space 1999.

Doctor Who, all these shows as a kid, had one thing in common and that was pure imagination.

Afrofuturism is taking the past, the present, and the future, which is not written, but in our heart, minds and hearts, it's there, bridging the imagination to those points in time.

That's how I see it.

It's more of a movement than it is a genre.

I consider myself just a speculative fiction writer, but I know that the blanket term Afrofuturism applies.

"Afro Puffs" is really kind of the story of a group of people, group of ladies, who keep getting dragged into situations, When all they're trying to do is have a barbecue.

I hold in my hands, chapter three: Our heroines have stolen some very top secret tech and are about to test it out.

Okay.

(jacket rustling) (sighing) - Okay!

Do we test this sucker now?

Or can you find a workable reason not to?

- We think that me studying snatched intel two weeks before we sold this merits testing.

I mean... You know?

S —!

F —!

Damn.

All you, now.

- You ain't lying.

The sucker came from the moon.

It has to do some wicked, gnarly s — - I wanna see all the wicked gnarly s — it can do.

(device activating) - How does Detroit play into my writing?

We do what needs to be done.

And that's what I try to bring into my writing, this sense that no matter what is happening, you know despite everything, create something!

Detroit is sci-fi and sci-fi is Detroit.

- [Minnie] This shows a good picture of art.

She did a beautiful job on it.

Yeah, you would be proud of your if you were still alive.

Yes you would.

Oh man.

Look what our daughter did.

He'd be so proud of you.

- My mom has been really important in my life.

Now, she says that she's not an but the way she had our house de and the way she made Christmases and made them all beautiful it was like, we went to bed and it was an ordinary house and then when we woke up on Christmas morning and it was transformed into this like fairyland.

And she did all of that.

She's an artist with her garden and her flowers.

So, even though she says she's not an artist, I think she is an artist in her And so that's how she influenced So when I do my art pieces and m I know exactly what they're supposed to look like.

I know exactly how they're supposed to carry themselves.

That was because of them.

Now, I don't like to dress.

I don't like dressing at all.

- [Minnie] Yes you are.

- I don't like dressing at all, but she instilled in me what you supposed to look like when you go out, out of the hous I go through my family pictures and I saw this one picture and it was of my mom, her sisters and they were on Lafayette and MacDougal and they were so, in my mind, dr and I said, mom, where are y'all She said, this is just how we dr This is we just hanging out.

And so I named the piece Hanging Out on Lafayette and Mac When I do my artwork and I have how I see my community, even now I'm talking about, you know I'm comparing 1950s, early 1950s to even now.

We are a classy people.

We are sharp.

I mean, we know how to, we might not have a lot but we know how to carry ourselves and we know how to make ourselves look good.

And it's such a dignity about it And I am so proud to be able to show other people how we look and how we are and how we think and how we feel.

And that we have pride in oursel That's very important for me to project in my artwork.

Very important.

(piano playing) (soft music plays) - The BOI's Failed Crown What do I make with this mess of flowers tansy and verbena make my mouth declare war and prayer in one breath make my body a maze of thorns intimacy spoiled by a lover's casual kiss softness a memory ground into dust my skin cold soaked with longing Black and then what night holds is a false promise, a hardened spine.

& if not for the I then what else keeps the BOI whole?

the I licks their lips and says I'm a good thing feels for the roof of Their mouth and thinks rigid wanting teeth, how space can be both void and full is a trick only the BOI knows well, the I is a hymnal unworthy of Their mother's tongue What is the BOI if not sometimes an apology?

The BOI sometimes an apology is a wingless bird stretching before the sun blinks a new day into existence, BOI incapable of flight is pulled closely into the body of a stranger, The I knows the chicanery of night - what it means to cradle the moon knowing it will always slip away, to be desired (even temporarily) is enough to feed the I's ego to open the BOI's mouth wide and cram Their jaws with everything they will one day lose a sense of self, what it feels like to be touched - how to soften, the liberty to pop and twist and shake and move underneath flashing lights, what it's like to be called home or called by name a jolt causing the I to return to Their body The I returns to Their body, see the BOI cradling an indigo child - small fingers wrapped around the I, a tiny squeeze - BOI searches the infants face for memory asks the I who this body belongs to, what is a name?

The indigo child yawns, becomes ghostlike - a dream sequence, the I was once a parade of daffodils swaying in the sun's crooked mouth, I, once a glimmer in Their mother's wheat eyes - the son she always wanted The I wilts in the grip of Their mother's religion.

call the I unholy or call the BOI whole.

Call the BOI whole.

(soft music accompanied by bird song plays out) - I started teaching history of graphic design at Wayne State a few years ago and became very aware of this absence of information from Detroit.

It's not an advertising capital in the way that, you know, New York or LA would be and just stories weren't coming out from here.

But I knew that it has this rich history because you see pamphlets, you know, at John King or wherever.

So I started to actually keep an eye on things that I thought looked interesting and then just decided to start to research them.

After that, I started to take note of the Detroit Printing Co-Op things because everything that they printed there had this bug on it that said all power to the workers, you know, which I appreciated.

And I was sort of...

I just started to kind of follow the threads of figuring out who was making those things.

But you had this group of people that came together, got a space where they could print materials that they felt they couldn't get otherwise.

They were connected with social movements, for instance, with the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, or whether it was for the Fifth Estate, kind of an anarchist newspaper at the time, or Radical America.

And then they were printing these things and taking control of the means of production in a very literal way.

So there's something about the print materiality which is very specific in the seventies and eighties, you know, we don't feel it as much now because we don't share information through pamphlets.

So at that time in the seventies, those pamphlets were the way that ideas were getting communicated.

Some of the things they were publishing were like either censored or just not available in translation in this country.

So they existed for 10 years, but without telling that story, I mean, it just wouldn't be known.

It's important to archive to save these materials.

But then also to kind of process and narrate them and then re-present them, so that becomes incorporated into the city's history, into the narratives.

It's not just about Detroit's history.

It's also about graphic design history and bringing things that are happening in Detroit into the larger conversations happening around graphic design's history.

I think graphic design is a really, you know, interesting place to situate yourself as a worker.

You do have the power to produce the thing that's going out into the world, trying to figure out how to harness that power and kind of increase it.

And then, also at the same time, try to lift up like my coworkers, you know, and really think critically about what we can do as graphic designers.

(soft gentle music) (Afro-Cuban music) - I dream of taking a machete to my stomach under a mango tree, cutting off everything that hangs from me, (but my mangots, of course) but the machete is magic and it leaves no mangoes or mangobs or globs of fat to splatter on my knees, it's just clean.

(Afro-Cuban music) And I thank the fat for mangoes so mangoious and burn a little of it up in offering to all the island mangoes who have mangoed under my tongue for ages.

I never mangoed to hold my own mango, and I wonder what hunger feels like in a land twisted free from temptmangon; holding mangotaneous space for grief and relief, the rest of my fat would be mango'd under that tree.

(Afro-Cuban music) And what Shakesmangoan pleasure I'd take in mangong my mangoer juicy, swollen flesh from that propitiatory tree!

Mang O was a child I mangoes worried I might disappear; but I grew mangoer and mangoer, And the possimangoty of disamangoing slipped away; Mango replaced with something sharper: a fantasy mangothing else.

And I don't feel (And that's not a mistake).

(Afro-Cuban music) Were I a necromango, I'd raise my grandmango from the grave and feed him, too.

Not because I love him, but because he was a prophet and he saw what I would become when my mouth fell into my own hands.

(soft music) - I lived in Detroit when I was a little girl.

Visited my grandmother who lived in Southwest Detroit, in a Mexican town neighborhood.

The Mexican family was really close, and my dad always insisted, that we visit my grandmother at least once a week.

I'd come as a little girl down Eastern Market, on Saturday mornings, and then we'd go visit grandma.

And go to other places like, Lafayette Coney Island, or just different places around Detroit.

And they became such special memories after losing my dad, that I tied Detroit to something that was special.

My dad died at 54.

During that time, I had these moments of thoughts, "My God, my dad was only 54," and I started doing math.

He was only 23 years old when I was born.

And I thought, "Wow, what if I only have 23 more years in my life."

"Who am I?

What have I done?"

I'm a wife and I'm a mother.

But I hadn't done something that was just for me.

Art was something that was always my calling.

I just decided to go for it, and go back to school, get the degree.

So I did.

I'm continuing my mosaics, but I just found, a whole bunch of these really cool round mold forms.

So, I wanna try some round pieces.

My work is kind of a reflection of the growth in the city, and how it's being reassembled from being shattered, and torn down.

And it's being rebuilt.

Lately, I've been focused on looking for a colorful car, when I'm driving.

I don't and I- Buses and mail trucks always look so cool to me.

But mostly, I'm just looking for composition.

And try to show the energy that I see in the city.

Sometimes when I ride around the city, and I remember what it was like, back when I used to go with my parents.

I think my dad would be really happy, if he could see the vibrancy of the city, and how much it's grown.

(soft music) (mellow music) - My mother used to call me her little dreamer.

I spent hours as a kid writing, drawing.

I had no idea what I was doing, but I was determined to get someone's attention.

Henry Maldonado at WDIV entertained my 11-year-old ambitions to be a writer.

I still appreciate him for that.

Growing up, I struggled to express myself.

I was a nerd and I was dealing with a lot of trauma.

My mother was ill and constantly in and out of hospitals.

And my father struggled with his own mental illness.

So comic books, science fiction, and fantasy novels and films became an escape for me.

I wanted to be a hero.

Having powers would surely have allowed me to change my family's situation.

I love telling stories about the genius that dwells within each of us.

Realizing one's genius is the lifeblood of my stories.

With "Therians: The Awakening," I wanted to create an epic story of rediscovering what was lost.

A story about finding a magic that has been buried deep.

Since I love werewolves and horror so much, the premise of the story was a no brainer.

I wanna aid in changing the paradigm.

I wanna be the guy that teaches everybody how to read.

What I mean by that is to realize that everything is artificial and designed.

Once we achieve that, we can deconstruct, and begin to build worlds for ourselves, according to our own imaginations, as opposed to the imaginations of others.

Beyond me, it's all about deconstruction and reconstruction.

And not only the character, Carlos Davis having a different career from his real life profession, but also in the character having to reconstruct his way of thinking in order to unlock the amazing powers that were inside of him all along.

I think it is the ghosts of Detroit that inspire me the most.

Knowing that so much artistic greatness has been erected from this city, fills me with a sense of pride.

I wanna be a part of that.

I want to contribute to that legacy.

(mellow music) (dramatic music) (grass rustling) (foreboding music) (suspenseful music) (grass rustling) (stick thuds) (suspenseful music) (metal clanking) (eerie techno music) (eerie music continues) (music softens) (music intensifies) (slow techno music) (eerie techno music) (music intensifies) (eerie techno music) (music intensifies) (music softens) - [Gisela] I'm personally not satisfied with how this world works.

There's just so much violence everywhere.

Detroit definitely took me in.

If I was comfortable with somebody, I would ask them if they would want to share any stories in exchange for being in a painting.

It's been extremely humbling to have people share their stories with me.

I always see like people coming out of some incredibly difficult situations, and we know it's not just us.

I want to see solutions.

I wanna see us talk about it.

I don't want it to be taboo or shameful.

I think there's a lot of power in conversation.

So to think about all the layers of violence, but also just think about how it affects us, you know?

So we can dream of better and safer societies for everybody.

There's so much significance in the objects that are placed in the paintings.

You know, when I am dipping plants, including these pieces of jewelry and shells, little shiny moments, the little sparkly moments.

Putting these layers of protection and making sure they have some kind of armor on them.

Safety is just such a big part of my love language.

My goal is to make sure that when the person sees their painting, it's something that they really feel seen.

They recognize themselves and they feel beautiful and celebrated.

What objects do you wanna be remembered with?

I think about all of the generations that came before me that weren't allowed to speak about their experiences.

I wanna see them in museums.

I wanna make sure that their voices are part of history.

At the end of the day, that's what it's about for me.

People are so much more than what happens to them.

They're the things that they love, they're the people that they love, they're the things that they create.

(train chugging) - I would describe my work as contributing to the African-American experience.

(bright piano music) "Daddy Where Do The Animals On The Train Go?"

is a children's book basically shows a father after a long day at work that hasn't been going well from African-American male and his daughter, and showing how he's in his daughter's life.

His daughter shows him how to use his imagination again.

I graduated CCS.

I found a job doing product design.

The economy took a downturn, and I was unable to get back into the design field.

I went to job interview after job interview and everybody just kept telling me no, and I just started feeling really down.

Unfortunately, I equated my art with who I was, and I just thought I wasn't good enough anymore.

I decided that I didn't want anything to do with art anymore.

I decided that that part of me wasn't legitimate.

I was inspired to write my children's book by my youngest daughter.

We were on the freeway driving and she says to me, "Daddy, where do the animals in the train go?"

I said, what?

I don't know what you're talking about.

'Cause at the time I'm driving and I'm watching traffic, and so I kind of... Not kind of, I dismissed her.

I said, listen, I don't have time for that right now.

I don't know what happens with animals on the train.

You know, we'll talk about it later.

A few days later, it hit me that I said that to her.

I just felt so bad.

At the same time, I was thinking about one of these days I like to create a story and then like the two kinda hit.

And when that happened I said, my daughter just gave me a gift.

I spent a long time.

I think more than a decade not drawing, not making music, you know, just working the regular job.

Doing what I have to do to be a responsible person.

And yes, you have to be a responsible person.

But as far as I know, I only have one life.

If you want something, you need to do everything that you can to realize it.

What's ever in your imagination, allow your imagination to just go.

Allow yourself to be.

Allow yourself to live.

(soft music) - My painting is a lot like writing.

It's a way of recording my thoughts, discovering.

There's not a lot known of my ancestors, as far as the Coahuiltecan are concerned.

My paintings are an attempt to discover that.

And I want to know, because you know, it's really hard in this world, to not really have a place to fit in, as far as an identity's concerned.

So in other words, I use my paintings to educate myself, about where I'm coming from.

And what my culture is about.

And I want to share it with the viewer.

That I'm a Chicano, but I'm also Native.

And therefore I belong here.

Which is why I don't really consider myself Latino anymore.

Because that sort of term favors the Europeanist.

The dominator.

And I wonder what my ancestors would think.

I'm like, no, I wanna make room for them.

I want to discover them.

I tie it into modern history because now, in this day and age, we can speak, and say it for the first time, in a perhaps ever, to say what I really think about exploitation, oppression.

These are real things that have a real problem.

They're not abstract.

They're not just political, but they are real.

And they have an effect on people's life quality.

And I want to challenge that.

I want to, you know, I want to be part of this movement that says, you know, including like "Black Lives Matter," And, "Me Too."

We're all equal, we're people, make room.

And it might be unpleasant for a lot of people, but that's too bad.

People have had this kind of power too long, and it's time to share it.

And I'm sure for them it feels like a threat, and okay, take it.

That's what it is then.

My paintings are a little bit angry.

Having said that, when I paint, I feel a sense of release, and a sense of joy almost, because it keeps me coming back to painting.

You know, it's not, just a sad, angry, depressing.

It is a release.

And I wanna share that with people.

For artists that are coming up, I kind of want to maybe demonstrate, that freedom in art, through art is possible.

I grew up in a relatively poor family, but art was always there.

It doesn't cost a lot to create art.

And some of the best art comes from people, that know what it's like.

And I want to show young people, that art belongs to everyone.

It doesn't belong to the few.

It doesn't belong to the wealthy.

It belongs to us.

You know, what's the greatest art in the world?

Only the artist can decide or only the viewer can decide.

It's not an authoritative thing.

And that's really kind of what I want to convey in my art.

This level of force that art belongs to us.

Oh, it's one hell of a coincidence, that a lot of the great art in the fifties, comes from, you know, white men in New York.

Well, there's lots, of great art in Burundi, that was being made, lots of great art in Mexico, that was being made, lots of great art in China.

You know, but it belongs to us.

(soft music) (soft music) - I go to the backyard to pick mint leaves for my mother.

Today my mouth fell wide when I saw the light slip into the hills and those boys I grew up with did not come back or so I hear.

Often mama would ask me to gather the mint leaves from behind our home and so I would leave for this nectar.

Without it, there is nothing sweet to speak of.

I pray that when I am gone, my people speak as sweetly of me as I do of them.

I see us often steeped in the land and hope that a shore remains a shore, not a place to become yesterday.

The girls have joined the boys now.

All of them tucked just beyond the earth, but I know that when I run from their mothers, not without a fight, a chase, a hunt, a honey, a home for the tea to settle, a haven for us to return to.

Like many communities to be Palestinian is to be of movement Whether it's dribbling a basketball or embroidering tatreez or showing up for a protest.

I love interrogating the dynamics of motion, that in between, because I think that's where most of us exist, escaping one state of being into another constantly.

Each day, I grow further from the land of my ancestors, as my cousins and their neighbors and their neighbors' neighbors are are all trying to survive the chokehold of apartheid and ethnic cleansing in places like Gaza.

Here in America, a place built upon ethnic cleansings of its own, so many of us face similar violence, indigenous, black, queer and more.

This is the reality my loved ones and I face, but there is more to us than what was taken from us.

As a result, I spend each day reimagining what this world can look like and I pour this motivation into my craft.

(upbeat music) (gentle music) (keyboard clicking) - Back when Bob Motts owned this place, it was the finest place for colored people in Chicago.

It had a stage and a band.

Everybody got dressed up and came out to see the latest colored act.

Music all the time, laughter, drinks.

Your mama and auntie and big sis would've had a good time here.

- [Narrator] I try to tap into black history and culture.

My characters are a witness to historical events that take place in African-American life.

Or my contemporary stories refer to the past.

Writing on historical subjects gives me a chance to shatter the monolithic view of African-American life.

- See God made these stupid years so people could test theyselves.

I see a lot of stupid 20 year olds.

I just give them a wide birth, cause that stupid can rub off.

If you know what I mean - [Narrator] I write cross genre so over the years, my stories may start out as one one thing and develop into another.

Right now my stories are taking me into musical theater.

I write the book in lyrics (classical music) For the last 10 years, the Extra Mile Playwrights Theatre an organization that I helped found has been developing theater for and about the community we live in.

We have created short plays from oral histories of the residents and businesses in this area.

We created a collaborative play from oral histories about the '67 rebellion.

- Nah, this ain't no race riot.

Look at them boys, colored and whites carrying a couch down the street.

Now that's integration for you.

- [Narrator] If there is one thing I've learned in my writing career, it is that life is not linear.

It sometimes is up and then down and even circles around.

I'm willing to take risks and experiment with theatrical form.

And I'm interested in building a community theater based in the community where I live.

(crowd clapping) Involving the community will only enhance the theatrical experience for new and young audiences.

And maybe the beginning of a new development process for plays and musicals.

(gentle music) (traffic whizzing) - Hi, my name is AndyT.

I'm a visual artist and a 2021 Kresge Artist Fellow.

So a lot of my artwork involves a lot of collecting mat collecting things, a lot of found materials, things that would otherwise make their way into the garbage.

Then I make installations with those in gallery spaces.

And even though my studio space is mostly piles of stuff, it's kind of materials in the wa for the next time I have an exhi And with what we've been doing, walking over the pedestrian brid is another way to sort of capture experience and memory.

You know, post World War II, there was a lot of new urban des building these interstate highwa that sort of cut through the cit The highways kind of were all built at different periods.

And you can see that the earlier like The Lodge, when they were first built, there were a lot of pedestrian b to go all the way through.

When you're closer to the core of the city, you can see pedestrian bridge from pedestrian bridge.

Like you can see how frequently, it was expected that people could just walk through the neighborhoods.

But then as you get further out on the edge of the city along The Lodge, the pedestrian become fewer and further in betw And so there really isn't any ex for people to be on foot or to be in wheelchairs or to be pushing their babies around, you know.

Pedestrians are really sort of c as to where they can walk when it's next to a highway.

And so you can see that when you look at historic aerial photographs of the city, as they tear through the neighbo and build on the highways.

You can see, you know, accessibility sort of decreases as transportation for cars and semis increases.

And so I think it's really impor to showcase and highlight the pedestrian bridges where they are, as we think about the place we wanna live, the city we live in, what we want it to be like, that there's so little regard gi simple act of walking.

We live in a really rich environ with just so much to look at and think about.

And I try to think about the abu of what's around us, and what ca with what already exists.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] By next Sunday, the autumn air browned the leaves in the trees.

A mist gathered at the hem of the island, cooling the loitering sun, and wetting nature's colors so they seem to bleed into the earth.

Staring off at the still water.

(cool music) Bishop pulled his thoughts into a prayer.

(cool music) The Lord is my shepherd.

The Lord is my shepherd.

The Lord is my shepherd.

But must I only be a sheep?

In green pastures I have met snakes.

Beside still waters I have watched my community drown in never ending sorrow.

You know, it as well as I do.

And you know, my truth, you know my heart and you know my name, will you say it?

Or will you turn your back on my life as my brothers and sisters, as my family?

The LGBTQ community is a huge part of these stories but the focus is not on any particular person in that community.

The focus is on the people around them.

The people like family, their neighbors their acquaintances, their friends who mold them and influence the people who they become.

And my hope is that through these stories, everyone will realize that they have an effect.

They are an influence.

And so that's what this story is about.

(birds chirping) (gentle music) - They ask me to write them a black poem.

To say nothing about my rape, even though it was midnight moon, in the middle of the day to me, and the blistering bruise's, still resemble a purple-ish dawn suffocating.

They say that it's dark, but it ain't black.

They ask me to write them a black poem, but mention nothing about my womanness, unless a black male claws outta me, with a neck full of noose and a face full of blue, and the rope tightens with his every breath.

Matter of fact, they ask me to write eulogies, for my son's death before he is born.

Allow my daughter to bury herself.

Let the sounds of her shovel, become the background music, to every black boy storyline.

They ask me to write them a black poem, to make sure I urban speak, make my teeth porcelain projects.

Subsidy checks.

Allow this anger to fly past my lips.

Let it unperch from the roof of my mouth, like a gargoyle, dragging its rage into the darkness.

Let it become a stone in the morning.

Tethered to the neck of a nigga, that is drowning in the vastness, of a system that hates his ass.

Forget that his mother, lover and daughter, can't swim either.

They ask me to write them a black poem, and then erase myself.

(birds chirping) (slow sad trumpet music) - [Brian] Detroit has a really fascinating mix of emotions.

(slow trumpet music) Pain has come in many different forms.

Whether it's racial injustice, whether it's economic injustice, other social injustices that have happened that have put Detroiters at a disadvantage in many respects nationally.

(police sirens wailing) But that element of joy is defiant to me because despite of whatever bad has happened, we still find a way to smile.

We find a reason to be joyful.

And so I believe that that adversity strengthens the joy that Detroiters feel.

One way that I can serve others through my photography, is by elevating the community, bringing visibility to a community or to individuals that may be overlooked, that may be underappreciated.

If through my images, I can show that there are people here of value, everyone here is of value, but there are people that you can elevate by means of positive imagery or optimistic imagery or at least balancing the narrative between the negative side and a positive side, at least balances the narrative, right?

If I can do that in an effective way, in my own way as an artist, that is service to the community.

(slow trumpet music) My body of photography is sort of an anthology of Detroit, but also my love letter to Detroit.

(slow trumpet music) - My name is Brian Day, and I'm from Detroit.

(slow trumpet music)