OPENING: FRIDAY, JUNE 27 from 6 - 10pm

"YOUR TOWN TOMORROW"

PHOTOGRAPHS BY CORINE SMITH

In the evolutionary urban order, Detroit today has always been your town

tomorrow. ...Detroit remains a surpassingly purposeful place, as important to

the nation right now as it has ever been maybe more so, because right now

it is telling us that the cities are in trouble. Detroit is the advance warning

system the flashing red light and siren for what could be a catastrophic

urban meltdown, and the country had damn well better pay attention.

- former Mayor Coleman A. Young from his autobiography 1994

When a photo series takes its title from a Coleman Young quote, there had better be something worth

looking at. Corine Smith delivers with the photographs in YOUR TOWN TOMORROW, on exhibition for the

first time. These photos show in rich detail the city Corine Smith has been observing since she moved to

Detroit from Eindhoven, The Netherlands, to attend the Cranbrook Academy of Art. Since then, Corine

has spent several years developing this new body of work. The time and care taken is evident in each

captured landscape. Corines photos of Detroit show a view of the city that is both refreshing,

exhilarating and hopeful while carefully stripping away the old clich?of Detroit urban photography;

she focuses her lens on people and places that are thriving within the city very much on their own

terms.

Over 30 prints from the series will be on display. Although what the artist has captured may not be the

exact scenes that Coleman Young would have envisioned or the scenario he was boldly warning the

world against, perhaps they shed light on the image of the future city; a fitting tribute to the Mayor that

created the citys Farm-A-Lot program in the 1980s.

Born in Gouda, The Netherlands, Corine Smith now lives and works in Southwest Detroit. She received

an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, and a BFA (Cum Laude) in Graphic Design from the Design

Academy in Eindhoven, receiving several awards from The Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts,

Design & Architecture. Design 99 is pleased to present Corine Smiths first solo exhibition in Detroit.

Thru: JULY 31, 2008