Beauty in Sadness

We see the beauty in happy things– but there is beauty in sadness, too.  A photo essay by Yves Marchand and Romaine Meffre captures the haunting beauty in Detroit’s demise, as featured in this Time article.

This is Detroit Central Station.  I’ve often stared at it as I passed by it in train rides and car trips, wanting to photograph it.  There was something so inexplicably attractive about this building– the essence of a grandeur that no longer exists, the ever-standing reminder of a lost era.

We see the beautiful in happiness, which is why we tend to ignore the beauty that exists in sadness, as well.  An aching, haunting, mesmerizing kind of beauty that captures our hearts and makes them long– for what, we don’t know.  But the more we seek the sunny side of things, the more we eschew the darker aspects of life.  The more we shun sadness, the less we notice of it.  We care not for crumbling buildings and broken windows– we want high towering buildings of shiny stainless steel and bold reflective windows; we do not gaze upon rusting metals of old desk chairs and falling fluorescent lights– we always cry out for more comfortable cushioned chairs, gleaming white boards stretching across walls; we would not attend a tour of a Spanish Gothic theater, caving in on itself, built at the height of the twenties– we would rather watch football games from the newly built skyboxes of plastic and metal, placing ourselves well above the rest of the world.

We do not care for sadness.  We do not care for eras lost.  We do not care for the impoverished, the helpless, the struggling.  We turn our heads from obviously crumbling, unsustainable infrastructures, children without proper education, cities without safety and stability.  And as we do this– as we try so hard to ignore all that is wrong with the world– all that we see to be ugly, all that we think can never be beautiful– we ignore those who desperately need attention and help.  We do not care for them.  Because we would prefer to view the beautiful things in life.

But here it is: there is beauty in sadness.  So look deeply, think carefully, and act– because if this is what Detroit is like in its “ugliness”, then imagine how it once was and could be again, in all of its beautiful splendor.

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Gabby Park is a pastime photographer who loves to look at the art of others.