Reviews for Cleveland: The Flats, the Mill, and the Hills

The average rating for Cleveland: The Flats, the Mill, and the Hills based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-06-13 00:00:00 Rocco Dolciato A mixed bag for me but gave me plenty to mull over as I lumber through thesis drafting.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-08-05 00:00:00 Steven Davis Andrew Borowiec, Cleveland: The Flats, the Mill, and the Hills (The Center for American Places, 2008) Les Roberts, in his introduction to this volume, mentions that people don't show up in these photographs. He's not quite right; there are five photos of the eighty-seven in this volume that contain people. They are far away and blurry, or their backs are to the camera, but they do show up. And I think I get what Roberts was saying'that humans are in no way the focus of these pictures'and he's right, but I think there's another layer to this. The population density in Cleveland has been slowly eroding away over the past decades, like the backyards of the mansions along Lake Road or the cliffs that hold up the houses in Rocky River. You can't look at these photos, if you've lived here for a while, and not think about that. I'm sorry to pick on Les Roberts, but the other bone I have to pick with his introduction (which I enjoyed a great deal, it's quite well-written and, while I am focusing on the things I disagree with, there's a lot more in there I don't have any problems with at all) was his focus on the classic-Cleveland vibe of these pictures. And that is there, of course, but my reading of Roberts' introduction was that it was there to the exclusion of modern Cleveland. Nothing could be further from the truth. While there are certainly pictures here that probably could have been taken thirty of forty years ago and would still look exactly like they do now, there are a lot of pictures here that use far more than Jacobs Field (or whatever they're calling it now) and that stupid-looking semicircular thing that looms over the west shoreway as you head downtown. Most of what those pictures use is more subtle, which to me makes it more powerful. There's one in particular (plate 40, listed as Elm Ave., The Flats in the key in back) that I'm almost sure was taken on the back porch of what is now Roc Bar, with those cheap wrought-iron tables that haven't been there for more than a couple of years looking over at a pile of salt that might as well be primeval. I love the tawdriness of that image. I want it on my wall somewhere. It's a perfect distillation of everything this beautiful, bleak book has to say. A perfect companion to the recent documentary City/Ruins. ****