1984 World Series Street Portraits: Photography by Carlos Diaz

March 23, 2024–January 6, 2025

NOW OPEN in the Detroit Artists Showcase 

During the summer of 1984, Detroit was buzzing with excitement and anticipation, as the Detroit Tigers got closer to winning the World Series. Carlos Diaz had just moved into the city that summer after accepting his first teaching job, and he began making portraits of individuals outside Tiger Stadium along Michigan Avenue and Trumbull. The portraits, taken during three of the 1984 World Series home games, were a mutual collaboration between the artist and those he desired to know more about: a young photographer’s attempt to connect with the people and fervor in the streets, at a very special time in this city’s history and in the place Diaz now called home. 

Carlos Diaz is a Professor of Photography and is currently photographing and conducting research for his second book, The Confederate Monument in the American South.

He was awarded a 2024 Guggeheim Fellowship.

Diaz is a former chair of the Photography Department at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, MI, where he has taught for 37 years. Before taking his position at CCS, Diaz taught at Bowling Green State University and the University of Michigan, School of Art (now the Penny Stamps School of Art). Prior to his teaching career, Diaz was a draftsman and mechanical designer in numerous capacities. Diaz has been assistant to Eugene Richards, Mary Ellen Mark and Lee Friedlander. For 40 years Diaz’s work has revolved around his interest in the fluidity of history and memory, the connections between people and place and how race relations impact the world in which we live.