Vergara to discuss decades-long project photographing Detroit

Chilean-born photographer and writer Camilo José Vergara will speak about his newest book, “Detroit is No Dry Bones: The Eternal City of the Industrial Age,“ on Monday, Feb. 13 at 6:30 p.m. in Hastings Hall, School of Architectur, 180 York St.

The talk is free and open to the public. A reception will follow.

Using an approach he calls “Tracking Time,” Vergara visits and revisits urban sites over many years, making photographs and recording observations and interviews. In this way, Vergara has gained the reputation as the foremost documentarian of change over time in American cities.

He is the author of “New American Ghetto” (1995), “American Ruins” (1999), and “Harlem: The Unmaking of a Ghetto” (2013) among many other works. Vergara is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, and the Library of Congress has acquired his archive of photographs and given them a permanent home. In 2013, he became the first photographer to be awarded the National Humanities Medal.