Meanwhile in Detroit captures natural beauty of the Rust Belt

Growing up in Buffalo and now living in Pittsburgh, I’ve always been surrounded by landscapes that blur the line between city and wild. In the Rust Belt, it’s common to find a patch of woods at the end of a block, or a stretch of riverbank beside an abandoned factory. These places don’t fit the postcard version of “nature,” but they are beautiful reminders that even in cities shaped by industry, the land never stops moving.

This is what drew me into Edgar Cardenas’ exhibition Meanwhile in Detroit, a photographic series now on view at Silver Eye Center for Photography. The show, presented in conjunction with another exhibition, As It Is by Nathan Cephas, documents Eliza Howell Park, a 250-acre public park in northwest Detroit. It sits between neighborhoods and highways, yet feels expansive and almost stubbornly alive. Over several years, Cardenas returned to the woods there with his camera, photographing the same place as seasons shifted. The result isn’t a grand portrait of wilderness, but an ongoing conversation with a landscape often overlooked.

The project includes five portfolio boxes containing 108 photographs, selected by the artist from thousands he made during this time. A show description stresses the relevance of the Vedic tradition and how the number “108” symbolizes interconnectedness and the wholeness of existence. That symbolism threads through the work, where each image feels less like an isolated document than part of a larger cycle.

The boxes, as well as the exhibition, begin and end with winter, signifying themes of reflection, cyclical time, and renewal. My favorite images are of snow blanketing the trees, quieting everything into a kind of stillness. In others, autumn leaves scatter across a damp trail. Spring arrives with tender greens; summer with bursts of dense growth. Seen together, they build a portrait of persistence and change, of how time marks both the land and our own lives.

But Cardenas’ photographs remind us that decline is only one part of the story. Even in the midst of vacancy, life continues — woods return, rivers flood and recede, wildflowers spread across forgotten corners. The city and the natural world don’t cancel each other out; they shape each other.

That rhythm feels familiar to anyone who has lived in post-industrial cities like Detroit, Buffalo, or Pittsburgh. These are places often described through what they’ve lost; factories closed, jobs vanished, populations in decline.

What’s striking about Cardenas’ work is its intimacy. These aren’t sweeping mountain views meant to create awe from a distance. They’re close-up encounters that include branches, paths that suggest recent footsteps, and textures of bark and snow. They are not spectacular in the usual sense, but quieter, calmer, and familiar. The work stays with you because it feels like something you’ve walked past a hundred times and never fully seen, a kind of presence that runs through the series.

Included in the show’s wall text is a line written by poet Mary Oliver: “You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” The words suggest a kind of acceptance, a willingness to meet the world as it is, an idea reflected in the images. They don’t demand penitence for environmental damage or nostalgia for what once was — they ask for attention, and for us to walk, to look, and to stay.

The personal weaves through the ecological here, too. Cardenas has spoken about how his son’s childhood unfolded alongside this project, how parenting shaped the way he returned to the park. That entanglement of family time and natural time gives the work its tenderness. It’s not only about trees and seasons, but about what it means to witness change while living inside it. Poet Ocean Vuong captures something similar: “Dear God, if you are a season, let it be the one I passed through to get here. Here. That’s all I wanted to be.” To me, that’s the essence of Meanwhile in Detroit — the photographs aren’t about escape, they’re about being here, in this city, in this landscape, in this moment, carrying penance.

At a time when conversations about climate and sustainability feel overwhelming, Cardenas’ work doesn’t try to solve everything. Instead, it opens a quieter space, reminding us that attention itself matters, that even in places overshadowed by stories of decline, there are ongoing stories of growth and renewal. Walking through the exhibition, I kept thinking about Pittsburgh’s own overlooked edges that I often take for granted — riverbanks sprouting with weeds, hillsides thick with greenery reclaiming properties long abandoned.

Like Detroit, Pittsburgh is full of places where nature has never disappeared, only shifted. Meanwhile in Detroit makes the case for noticing them, for valuing the ordinary landscapes that hold memory, resilience, and the possibility of renewal. In the end, what Cardenas gives us is less a document than an invitation to slow down, to return to the same places, to see what has changed, and what has endured. In winter, in pause, there is always the possibility of beginning again.

Meanwhile in Detroit. Continues through Sat., Oct. 18. Silver Eye Center for Photography. 4808 Penn Ave., Garfield. Free. silvereye.org