This story was originally published by ArtsATL.
In his new book, “The Makeshift City” (GOST Books, 2024), Georgia State University photography instructor Joshua Dudley Greer tells the story of an ever-changing Atlanta in 69 color photographs made over the last half-decade.
All cities are perpetually in flux. But in Atlanta, relentless change is something like a civic philosophy: The city has been remade through war, through the marking of racial territories, through national politics and even through the Olympic Games, always reemerging as something anxious and lurching again toward its own reinvention.
Greer’s immaculate images of the city reflect this change, not as a vision of progress but as a testament to how people find ways to live in the joints between the monoliths of urban life. They fashion their pieces of the world, as the larger world around them remains oblivious — even hostile — to their existence.
Greer captures moments of raw improvisation; moments of brittle freedom; moments of human actions that seem insufficient but still necessary. ”The Makeshift City” is not a city that triumphs but rather a city that makes do. A city not of pristine plans but the result of recruiting whatever materials lie immediately at hand. And the lives lived in that city — perhaps not unlike lives everywhere — make their small imprint, themselves also created moment to moment from the spare parts of an urban machine.
Below are six images from “The Makeshift City” selected by Cinqué Hicks and annotated by Joshua Dudley Greer.
Credit: Photo by Joshua Dudley Greer
Credit: Photo by Joshua Dudley Greer
“Demolition, Atlanta, Georgia” (2022): “Coca-Cola, MARTA, Grady — several iconic Atlanta landmarks can be seen just beyond the freshly dug, red-clay soil, soon to transform into luxury apartments on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.”
Credit: Photo by Joshua Dudley Greer
Credit: Photo by Joshua Dudley Greer
“Masjid Al-Momineen, Clarkston, Georgia” (2018): “This photograph was made during a midafternoon prayer in 2018, just as a summer thunderstorm opened up. At that time, the Masjid Al-Momineen was constructing a new mosque and would hold prayer outside to accommodate the overflow of practicing Muslims during the month of Ramadan.”
Credit: Photo by Joshua Dudley Greer
Credit: Photo by Joshua Dudley Greer
“Downtown Connector (Lifting Weights), Atlanta, Georgia” (2022): “Atlanta is not a real place.”
Credit: Photo by Joshua Dudley Greer
Credit: Photo by Joshua Dudley Greer
“Auburn Avenue (Civil War), Atlanta, Georgia” (2022): “This historic and once-prosperous stretch of Auburn Avenue has fallen into such neglect and disuse that television and film studios often use it to stage scenes of poverty, violence and dystopia. Pictured here is a scene from Alex Garland’s aptly titled film ‘Civil War’ (2024).”
Credit: Photo by Joshua Dudley Greer
Credit: Photo by Joshua Dudley Greer
“Downtown Connector (Ladder), Atlanta, Georgia” (2021): “Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that cities can enforce bans on homeless people sleeping outdoors, even as homelessness in the United States grew a dramatic 12% to its highest reported level. Michael was one of hundreds of people who were forcefully removed from their encampments, and this hollow den off the Downtown Connector was welded shut.”
Credit: Photo by Joshua Dudley Greer
Credit: Photo by Joshua Dudley Greer
“Buckhead, Atlanta, Georgia” (2024): “In early 2024, the Tesla Cybertruck was so rare and in such demand that folks were paying over twice the manufacturer’s suggested retail price — in some cases as much as $250,000. That same year, Atlanta was ranked worst in the nation for income inequality.”
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Cinqué Hicks is editor-in-chief of ArtsATL.
Credit: ArtsATL
Credit: ArtsATL
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