As an industrial photographer for Detroit Edison (now DTE Energy) where he was hired following his battle-scarred World War II service in the Philippines, Norman Zadoorian often roamed the streets of downtown Detroit with his twin lens Rollieflex camera during lunch hour and nighttime. He captured hundreds of compelling black and white photos of pedestrian street scenes, workers, and everyday people during the mid-20th century.
His son, award-winning novelist Michael Zadoorian, shared parts of his late father’s photographs with the State of Michigan Library in Lansing, who in 2024 hosted the exhibit The Searching Eye: Images of Mid-Century Detroit. He plans to eventually preserve the entire collection of thousands of prints and negatives by donating it to the library.
Now through May 15, 2027, courtesy of the library, the exhibit featuring 40 photographs and some of Norman Zadoorian’s cameras can be viewed in the Detroit Artists Showcase gallery on the second floor of the Detroit Historical Museum.
What to Expect from ‘The Searching Eye’
Zadoorian’s photos remind one of the artistic sensibilities of the famous French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson who pioneered the genre of street photography.
Divided into three parts — “Night and the City”, “Detroit as Muse”, and “City of Work”— some of Zadoorian’s subjects from the late ‘40s and ‘50s include business people and shoppers walking in downtown Detroit, a Buick dealership salesman at his desk, and car wash workers. Other subjects include an elephant on the street helping to publicize the Shrine Circus, a repairman fixing the sign at the Cliff Bell’s jazz club, a burlesque theater, and a nighttime outdoors voyeuristic look inside a pawn shop and sandwich shop.
“Going through the exhibit is like walking through a corridor and stepping back in time where you can suspend reality a little bit, and see what the city was like,” says Tracy Irwin, Chief Exhibitions and Enrichment Officer at the Detroit Historical Museum. “There’s something very powerful about seeing people 70 years ago walking down the streets you walk down now. It really connects you to the past like nothing else can. It’s great when we can bring art and history together.”
A Father-Son Collaboration
Michael Zadoorian wrote the exhibit text including the captivating short essays that accompany each photograph. He wrote the novel The Leisure Seeker, which became a Sony Pictures Classics film starring Donald Sutherland and Helen Mirren. Additionally, he’s received several awards, including a Kresge Artist Fellowship in the Literary Arts, the Michigan Artists Award, and two Michigan Notable Book awards for 2010’s The Lost Tiki Palaces of Detroit and 2018’s Beautiful Music.
“Looking at the photos so closely while in the process of writing the text gave me a chance to think a lot about my dad, including the fact that he was taking them not long after being wounded in World War II,” says Zadoorian, a former copywriter for the Campbell-Ewald advertising firm. “He was just happy being able to observe what was going on around him when Detroit was bustling. But there is also a darker kind of noir element to some of the earlier photos. I love the idea of the photos sort of illuminating and educating people about Detroit from that period.”
Tracy Irwin is particularly pleased that Zadoorian contributed the exhibit text.
“It’s so personal to him and that really comes through in the descriptions, because it makes the photos more accessible to visitors,” she says.
His father’s 1958 photo on display of a woman walking down a street will appear on the cover of Zadoorian’s upcoming novel Beat Girl (Beatdom Books, March 2027). The novel centers on Edie Parker Kerouac, the late Grosse Pointe native and first wife of Beat Generation writer Jack Kerouac.
“I’m thrilled that the book designer chose the photo because it works so well and feels of that era,” says Zadoorian. “It’s like I collaborated with my father.”
Daniel Eller, co-founder of the Barbershop Art and Book Gallery in Hamtramck attended the exhibit preview opening held on May 14th.
“Norman Zadoorian captured a world that no longer exists in Detroit,” says Eller. “I think it’s a great exhibit. Since all cities change, it’s important that we have documentation of a Detroit that is long gone.”
Viewing Details
The Searching Eye: Images of Mid-Century Detroit is open to the public until May 15, 2027 at the Detroit Artists Gallery on the second floor of the Detroit Historical Museum located at 5401 Wooward Avene across the street from the Detroit Institute of Arts. Hours are Wednesday to Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, visit, detroithistorical.org or call 313-833-1805.
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