By: Nancy Barr, Curator of Photography at the Detroit Institute of Arts | Photographs by Corine Vermeulen
This conversation began with a look back on where it all started for photographer Corine Vermeulen who settled into a long and productive career as an artist living and working in Detroit since 2006. Spending the afternoon in the Detroit Institute of Arts’ Kresge Court, we looked through a box of recent photographs in the early winter light of the court's atrium. Vermeulen discussed the evolution of her practice and revealed the inspiration for her latest exhibition Shadow Works opening Thursday, January 23, 2025 at ArtClvb in Detroit. This interview took place on Thursday, December 19, 2024.
Let us start at the beginning, you’ve been in Detroit now since 2006, but tell me about your life before that and what brought you to the Motor City?
I grew up in a small town in the Netherlands and went on to study graphic design at the Design Academy Eindhoven. During my last year there, I did an internship at Colors Magazine in Italy—a publication known for its progressive ideas and imagery. At the time, photographers Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin had just come in as creative directors, and Stefan Ruiz was also there. Seeing the images they produced for the magazine made me realize I didn’t want to be a graphic designer—I wanted to be a photographer. Their distinct style, socio-political awareness, and use of medium and large format cameras left a huge impression on me.
Colors Magazine was housed in the same building as Fabrica, a communication research center also sponsored by United Colors of Benetton, where I met people from all over the world—some who remain close friends today. It was a life-changing experience. It was also where I first heard about Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. Since I didn’t have any formal training as a photographer, I figured grad school would be a great way to dive in and Cranbrook’s proximity to Detroit caught my attention as a long-time techno fanatic. Winning a scholarship from The Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture made it all possible, and what started as a grad school plan turned into a long-lasting connection with Detroit.
What were your first impressions of Detroit and what drew you to the city?
I was originally drawn to Detroit by my love for techno music, which I'd been into since I was a teenager. Back then, Detroit was just an abstract idea, I didn’t know much beyond the music. I was a young club kid escaping conservative parents, finding a sense of freedom and community on the dance floor.
When I first visited the city in 2001, the experience was overwhelming, I’d never seen such large-scale abandonment. It was jarring and deeply challenging, and it made sense that a place like this could give rise to such emotive, futuristic music. To me, one of the strengths of the early ’90s techno music was its ability to sound completely melancholy and euphoric at the same time. It contains so much paradox, and I saw a similar complexity in Detroit—just as layered and contradictory. And like Detroit itself, techno often comes with misconceptions—for me techno was never about the drug culture that it’s often associated with. It was always about the music; about the emotions and ideas it could evoke.
I think I’ve always subconsciously been attracted to things that hold duality, which can contain opposites—and this is something I’m consistently drawn to in my photography as well. Of course, Detroit has gone through tremendous changes, and I’m not the same person I was back then either. While I used to enjoy the electronic music scene here, I don’t go out much anymore.
What unique Detroit experience keeps drawing you back, even with all your travels?
These days, my absolute favorite thing to do in Detroit is roller skate at one of the rinks. I’m still a music head, just on a different frequency now. Techno is fast and exciting music, while roller skating here moves at a more easygoing tempo, set to funk, soul, 90s R&B, hip-hop, house, and disco.
Detroit has a rich skating history, linked back to the Motown era, and many of the rinks have been around for decades. I love to watch Detroit style skating, which is characterized by intricate footwork, rhythm, and flow. The skill level and artistry here is mind-blowing. I was taking lessons for a while, but it’s so intense, I’m fine just rolling around and admiring the other skaters.
Detroit has had a big impact on your work. What other influences—artistic, photographic, or otherwise—have made an impression on you and shaped your work?
Detroit gave me the time and space to develop my visual voice. I found a quiet haven here where I could focus and get very serious about building long term immersive bodies of work. Before Detroit I was kind of all over the place. Dutch photographers like Rineke Dijkstra and Dana Lixenberg have been early influences—their portraits carry so much depth and humanity. I’ve also always appreciated Dutch and Flemish paintings from the 17th century for the formal quality of the compositions and naturalistic representations. Seeing LaToya Ruby Frazier’s first museum solo exhibition at MOCAD in 2010 also made a big impression; her storytelling is deeply personal and socially engaged, creating narratives that are as intimate as they are political.
I know you were inspired by photographer August Sander’s People of the 20th Century series of portraits of Germans from all walks of life. Taking inspiration from this series, we worked together on a commission and exhibition for the Detroit Institute of Arts called The Walk-In Portrait Studio in 2014. This series came out of an earlier project where you set up a portrait studio on Klinger Street in Detroit and invited the neighbors to sit for a free portrait in 2009. The project came from a sincere impulse on your part to show the vibrancy and diversity of this community when the rest of the world thought Detroit was finished. This series continued right up until around 2019. When you look back on this incredible archive, what strikes you most about the portraits, the series, and Detroit, in retrospect?
When I think about The Walk-In Portrait Studio series now, what really stands out is how it reflected Detroit’s shifting identity and the city’s collective resilience during such a turbulent time. What began as a small improvised studio in a foreclosed house during the economic downturn of 2009 grew into something much bigger than I ever expected.
It was a tremendous honor to have this body of work further commissioned by the DIA and exhibited in a museum where the people photographed could see themselves represented on its walls. The exhibition took place in 2014, during the city’s bankruptcy under an emergency manager, when there was even a threat of selling off some the museum’s art collection to settle debts. I think this context further underscores how, even as the city faced extreme challenges, its communities responded with resilience, creativity, and a fierce commitment to one another. I think the archive, which also includes many interviews, tells a story of empowerment, diversity, and shared humanity. It's a visual record of people who, despite often being overlooked, were active participants in shaping their neighborhoods and preserving the vitality of their city.
Looking back on when I first moved here, Detroit was unlike anywhere I’d been—raw, resourceful, self-reliant, and full of inspiring people who were incredibly welcoming. I loved the city’s DIY culture, grassroots activism, urban farming, and the idea of a self-sustainable, green city. Those elements inspired so much of my early photographs.
In 2018, you started two new bodies of work, one series you called Nachtwerk – a response to chronic insomnia and other personal factors shaping your life at the time – specifically the loss of your father. Can you describe how your work and practice evolved at this time?
When my dad passed, I also lost a significant relationship, and I was in a disorienting state of grief. It was a time when I was questioning everything. A good friend invited me to stay with them in Medellín, Colombia. I had been there many times before and it’s become somewhat of a second home. And although I wasn’t planning to take photos, I threw a camera, one lens, and a flash into my bag—just in case. Within days, I found myself looking through the lens like I was rediscovering photography all over again. I didn’t have my usual equipment, so I worked differently—without a tripod and with just one frontal flash. A lot of it happened at night because I was struggling with insomnia, and my friend, a DJ/producer, often took me out to events.
Before the trip, I had been stuck—taking really bad portraits in my studio and feeling disconnected from my usual process. In Medellín, I worked with whoever was around. The work evolved spontaneously, and it was incredibly freeing to move away from traditional portraiture. Afterwards I began doing my usual little interview sessions and then realized I was falling into the same trap: I was trying to make it about other people again, but this wasn’t about them. This was about me.
Looking back, I think Nachtwerk was way ahead of me—a premonition of a deeper reckoning. While it felt playful and experimental at the time, there was also a darkness in the work that foreshadowed what was to come. Shortly after completing the second part of the series in 2019, I started experiencing the symptoms of what later was diagnosed as chronic fatigue syndrome. I was constantly exhausted no matter how much I slept, and I had terrible brain fog. Those four years of illness reshaped me completely, and Nachtwerk feels like it captured the start of that journey.
And I really loved to see you move into abstraction and also pull images from your archive to create a whole new body of work called Kodak and the Comet in 2018 – this was very large-scale work – the ghosts of Detroit buildings and skylines are obscured by patches of color and organic forms corroding the imagery. It was a very different direction. How did this series come about?
When the political climate radically changed in 2016, I was dealing with a lot of disillusions around that and at the same time Detroit was changing very fast as well. I wasn’t creatively inspired by a lot of it. I think I felt I needed another visual language to cope with it.
With my documentary work I had been working in a similar style for so long, and there was always this latent desire to explore abstraction—I just didn’t know how to bridge the gap between social realism and something more abstract, or how it would fit in with my other work. Initially, I thought the darkroom would be the place to experiment, but the chemicals triggered migraines, so I had to put that aside.
Then came Nachtwerk, which unexpectedly veered into surrealism. That shift opened up so many possibilities and gave me the confidence to push further into abstraction. Instead of the darkroom, I began experimenting in my studio with exposed film negatives I had taken of Detroit landscapes around 2006, using household chemicals to dissolve the film’s emulsion. It took time, but eventually, I started seeing the results I was hoping for.
I’ve always admired Helen Frankenthaler’s immersive color fields. While I’m not a painter, I was inspired to achieve something similar—not through paint but by lifting and manipulating the color emulsions on the film negatives to create these layered, fluid color washes.
Since 2020, we’ve all experienced major challenges in our day-to-day existence particularly with the onset of the pandemic and life in a post pandemic world. Everything feels so different and Detroit went through a transformation as well. The period was impactful on artists, and you developed even more new work during this time while dealing with difficult personal issues. It is around this time that you start work on The Klonopin Pictures series. What was happening in your life at this time and how did the series come about?
The pandemic was a deeply introspective time. When I got slammed with chronic fatigue in the latter half of 2019, I had no choice but to confront adjacent issues like anxiety and chronic insomnia, which run in my maternal family. As a long-time meditator, starting with Zazen when I was 18, I leaned heavily on meditation as my main mental health tool during this period. It helped me regulate, recharge, and also explore new ways to visualize the internal versus the external.
To deal with insomnia I had been prescribed Klonopin as a sleep aid, but I never felt comfortable taking it long term. Trying to get off it was a nightmare. Even with careful tapering, the withdrawal was brutal. Once I was finally able to stop taking it, I experienced incredibly vivid and psychedelic dreams. I wanted to try to integrate that experience into my abstract works, so I ground up the remaining Klonopin pills and mixed them with the chemicals I use to lift the film emulsions. To my surprise, the powder left visible imprints in the form of tiny dots, creating abstract patterns that echoed the psychedelic nature of the withdrawal process, and this is how The Klonopin Pictures was born. While I couldn’t produce much work during my illness, this series became a way to process and reflect on that challenging time.
To anyone reading this not knowing about the dangers involved: please stay away from benzodiazepines. Doctors often prescribe them casually, but they’re incredibly addictive and have far-reaching consequences. Don’t get me started on Big Pharma’s role in all of this...
In this new exhibition for ArtClvb, psychedelic colors and surreal image juxtapositions make it seem that the unconscious is playing a larger role in your art practice now. Is the installation driven by a personal narrative or something else?
This exhibition is deeply tied to my recent experiences—loss, healing, and transformation. I think my work has always been infused with a strong psychological undercurrent, themes of trauma and the subconscious, even if I didn’t fully recognize it in my earlier work. Looking back, I see those threads in my documentary practice—they’ve always been there, quietly shaping the narrative.
The title of the exhibition Shadow Works draws directly from Jungian psychology, which speaks to the process of integrating the unconscious parts of ourselves—those aspects of our psyche that we often repress or deny. My work, especially the recent installation, is very much an expression of this exploration.
I work intuitively, trusting that the meaning and connections will emerge in time. At first, I struggled with a sense of conflict that came from working in different styles, but now I’ve learned to accept it. The work just started flowing this way, it felt out of my control, and I’m accepting that these different modes are part of my ongoing dialogue with the medium and with my own practice. It’s a journey, and I’ve come to realize that it's about letting the work unfold naturally, rather than forcing it into a predefined structure. Each mode has its place, and I believe they can co-exist in dialogue with one another. It makes my practice more layered and it’s a way for me to keep it exciting and to keep pushing the boundaries.
As you start the new year with this exhibition, what is your sense of the year ahead?
The exhibition opens just three days after the presidential inauguration, and I find the current volatility and division very overwhelming. I tend to step back from it, also avoiding social media to prevent my nervous system from being fried all over again. Instead, I try to focus on what feels meaningful in my own small world, and a big part of that is teaching. I love working with a younger generation of photographers and helping them develop their own voices.
This commitment to teaching has also led me toward a broader sense of service. This summer, after the teaching semester wraps up, I’m returning to The Netherlands to complete a one-year training program in mental health peer support that I began last year in Rotterdam. Having navigated my own mental health challenges, I feel a strong responsibility to help others on their journeys. Supporting others also reinforces my own recovery and gives me a greater sense of purpose in what often feels like a very uncertain and fragmented world. It’s a way of extending the same care and understanding I try to bring to my art practice into a different realm of human connection.
Artistically, I feel drawn to reconnecting with my roots. I’ve been slowly working on a new project with the working title Looking for Cornelia, which explores family roots, intergenerational trauma, and mental health. I want to understand how this relates to the recurring ideas in my work—identity, community, and belonging. I haven’t photographed much in the Netherlands at all, and I see this as the missing puzzle piece for the project — a chance to deepen my work in a way that feels like uncharted territory for me, but also something that’s been a long time coming.
