Between 1910 and 1920 Highland Park's population grew to about 46,500, an increase of 1,081 percent. Its growth, as well as that of its neighbor Hamtramck broke records for increases of population. Detroit's population was growing at a rapid pace as well and it seemed everything was bright for the region.

    Chrysler Corporation would also place its headquarters in Highland Park. Walter Chrysler founded the company in 1925 from a re-organized Maxwell Motor Company.  By 1936, the automaker was number two in sales in the U.S. behind Ford. Yet, there would be periods of growth and decline. By the 1970s with energy shortages sending gas prices rising, the luxury vehicles and mini-vans that made up the company’s bread and butter became less desirable.  To make matters worse, faulty construction on the Dodge Aspen and Plymouth Volaré led to millions in losses.

     In 1978, Lee Iacocca, an auto executive formerly with Ford Motor company was hired to stop the bleeding.  After securing a $1.5 billion loan guarantee from the U.S. Congress to save the company, Iacocca ushered in success byway of new car lines throughout the 1980s.  Thus it was a surprise to many when in 1992, the same year Lee Iacocca would step down as chairman, the company abruptly announced a move of its Highland Park facility to its technology headquarters in Auburn Hills, Michigan fifty miles away.

   Chrysler was now emphasizing its new platform-team concept, organized around individual vehicles, which required that various disciplines, including product design, engineering, manufacturing and procurement and supply, work together beneath one roof.  "Under this organization, it is essential for the entire team to be together in the same location," said Lee A. Iacocca, the company's chairman in The New York Times.  "We can't have our executives traveling 50 miles back and forth for meetings two and three times a day."

   Years later, the loss of Chrysler’s 12,000 jobs can be seen as the crushing blow for the city of Highland Park, according to Lindsey Porter, the first elected mayor the year the company vacated.  “We got a little over $8 million a year from Chrysler in taxes,” said Porter to the Michigan Messenger newspaper.  “At the time, it took $7 million just to run a decent fire department, and the city had a budget of $13.5 million.  So it was devastating."

   Mirroring the hard times of its former rival Detroit, Highland Park became only a mere shell of its former self.  Porter remembers the city as a clean, bustling town full of shops and movie theaters and manicured neighborhoods.  “Believe me, the city being in decline the way it is -- we feel it to the effect of losing your grandmother or a parent,” he said.  “A lot of times people will make jokes about their hometown, but we make jokes to hide the pain.”

     NO STEREO IN MOTOWN reflects on photographic perception -- the making and unmasking of illusion, which is a distinctive characteristic of the medium.  The photos here are shot with a stereo film camera. Yet each half-frame is matched with a dissimilar half-frame creating a “disruptive” image; one that is open to narrative, but resistant to illusion.