Godlis: Miami

Book excerpt: In January of 1974, David Godlis, then a 22-year-old photo student, took a ten-day trip to Miami Beach, Florida. Excited to visit an area he had frequented a decade earlier as a kid, GODLIS set his sights on an area of slightly outdated efficiency art deco hotels that was then a busy Jewish retiree enclave on the expansive beaches facing the Atlantic Ocean. These retirees, all dressed up in their best beach outfits, would spend their days on lounges and lawn chairs, playing cards amidst the sunshine and palm trees. GODLIS walked his way through this somewhat surrealistic scene, shooting what he now considers his first good photographs. In so doing he discovered his own Street Photography style - an eclectic mix of influences, from Robert Frank to Diane Arbus, from Garry Winogrand to Lee Friedlander.