Roger J. Martin: 1970’s Cass Corridor, Detroit

When Roger Martin arrived at Wayne State University in the early 1970s, he began taking photographs of the people around him—neighbors on stoops, families in their apartments, workers between shifts, children on streets that were both hard and alive. He wasn’t trying to define Detroit’s Cass Corridor. He was documenting it. Providing evidence that these lives were lived, these moments occurred, these communities mattered.

The Corridor in that decade was home to a dense, complicated mix of people, poor and working-class residents, artists, immigrants, and outsiders of every kind. Martin photographed without flinching and without condescension. Drag performers and burlesque shows at the Gold Dollar on Cass (the same building that would later launch The White Stripes and define a different era of Detroit underground culture entirely) alongside gay and lesbian couples, racially integrated groups of friends, hustlers, children at play, families getting by. His lens was honest, and it trusted its subjects.

“Through these images, I hope to transport the viewer to a time and era of Detroit’s Cass Corridor that is now long gone—to see people where they are and let them describe their situation.”

Curated from thousands of images, this inaugural issue of LEDGER marks the first time Martin’s work has been published. What comes through every image is the life of the community: people navigating their lives alone and with each other in a place that has become legend. As a publisher based in Metro Detroit, we could not have imagined a more fitting place to begin.