Multimedia Photography Exhibit

The photography exhibit "Visualizing Translation" focuses on multilingual migrant communities in Southwest Detroit and Northern Dortmund, Germany, to ask how residents lay claim to and shape their neighborhoods for the better. Whereas Detroit and Dortmund are often characterized by their failures and/or their postindustrial landscapes, this exhibit provides depth and context to the many ways residents of Southwest Detroit and Northern Dortmund navigate life in their respective communities in positive and productive ways.

In addition to a series of striking streetscapes, this exhibit contains sixteen portraits accompanied by brief narratives of home and migration, which visitors may listen to via QR code in English, Spanish, or German. Detailing the complex and often perilous routes that brought many residents to Detroit and Dortmund, these narratives grapple with two key terms: homeland and Heimat. Through their multilingual narratives, residents break open the exclusionary modes of belonging these terms have historically evoked. By bringing to light multiple forms of local and transnational belonging, residents challenge the idea that"Americans" or "Germans" can be identified with a single language or a single racial or ethnic group. On the contrary, they encourage us to work toward more inclusive understandings of home and belonging that are inherently plural.