Detroit Photo Exhibits At National Building Museum Offer DC A Glimpse Of Motor City (SLIDESHOW)

DC residents are getting a glimpse of the D with two photography exhibits that opened Sunday at the National Building Museum.

Views of Detroit and its residents are displayed through rich, large-scale photographs of urban decay in Andrew Moore's "Detroit Disassembled" and Camilo José Vergara's examination of the city through the years in "Detroit Is No Dry Bones." The two exhibits will be on view in adjacent galleries until February 18.

For Detroiters who feel saturated by images of urban decay, Moore's image of the melted clock in the razed Cass Tech high school, recently turned into a commercial object as the likely inspiration for a Swatch watch design, may seem overwrought. But the visceral, metaphoric depictions of the city's struggles will likely strike a chord for those who have never witnessed it first hand, and there's no denying the artist's talent for finding beauty in the city's abandoned ruins.

Vergara's view of Detroit, refined after more than a quarter century visiting the city, offers a more nuanced view, where the ruins take a background role to the lives of residents and current projects.

Take a sneak peek at some of the photographs in "Detroit Is No Dry Bones" and "Detroit Disassembled" in the slideshow below, and tell us how it changes, or reinforces, your view of the city in the comments.