16 Amazing Vintage Detroit Photos by Bill Rauhauser

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Tuba and beer - "What makes this shot for me, what really gets me every time, is the full glass of beer down in the corner. It just looks like a good glass."

Man holding face at fair - "You have to know what you're shooting so you have to know what's happening around you and be able to put together what's happening with the context of the environment."

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Eight people intently watching a protest rally in Detroit - "I like taking photos of people when I know for sure they're looking at something else."

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Bill's wife Doris on a cruise ship.

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Self portrait - "This shot was really about the living room. I'd assembled quite a room, with all Herman Miller furniture and modern accessories. I was very proud of it as its owner and the designer of the room, but to take a photo of it, there needed to be a subject. I was never interested in self-portraits. You got to admit, that's a room."

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Short order cook, head in hand, Detroit, 1963 - "There's a true sense of exhaustion captured in this shot. We know that feeling. But then, maybe it's more, maybe what he's feeling is more grave than that. Despondence? We don't know, we can only wonder. Maybe he's just tired."

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"Often, in the afternoon, I’d grab a cup of coffee at the Kresge Court inside the Detroit Institute of Arts. There were always beautiful women there - talking and smoking."

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"Sometimes they looked like movie stars."

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Portrait of photographer and inventor Max Scholz.

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Streetcar stop, Detroit - "I must have been on an overpassing crosswalk when I took the shot. Probably just looked out and there it was. There were always people waiting at the streetcar stops, which were unprotected, in the middle of the road. It was a scary place to be sometimes."

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Sweeper in alley behind J.L. Hudson - "I was walking down an alley around J.L. Hudson building when I saw this guy sweeping. He was the only person around. He stopped and looked up when he saw me and I took his photo. I think the lightbulb makes the shot." | Photos: Bill Rauhauser

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Boys throwing rocks into Lake Michigan, Chicago - "The way these guys are moving, it's like ballet, really. And if you look, each one of the kids is in a different part of the throwing motion."

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Detroit Cornice and Slate Building, 1970.

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Woman smoking - "Often, in the afternoon, I'd grab a cup of coffee at the Kresge Court inside the Detroit Institute of Arts. There were always beautiful women there talking and smoking. Sometimes they looked like movie stars."

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Lone nun walking in front of old building - "The thing about this shot, and about taking photos of nuns and priests, is that because of how they dress, they don't look of this time, of modern times, so to the eye there's a sense of historical unusualness. Here, with how's she's walking, there are interesting angles and forms her clothes are making, and the building she's walking in front of helps place her out of Detroit, which is, of course, where she is."

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Girl thrown in water, WSU campus, Detroit, 1968 - "This is the only street shot I've ever taken that I waited to see if something was going to happen. Usually, the photograph is a moment that just happens. But I was walking around Wayne State University one day and I came upon a group guys teasing this girl, and this girl wasn't taking it. They kept going back and forth, so I sat down to see how it was going to play out. Just like that, they grabbed her, picked her up and swung her into the water."

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