Through the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s iconic entrance, up the grand stairs and toward the Modern Art section, a small gallery is currently hosting a wonderful exhibition of photos of Florida by Anastasia Samoylova and Walker Evans. The exhibition brings together a body of work that not only details the history and growth of Florida, but also showcases the strange and surreal qualities of life down there.
Florida juggles being a paradise destination, a conservative hotbed and a land endangered by climate change. The exhibition is a must-see for anyone intrigued by photography as a tool for documentation and social advocacy.
A multi-generational gap exists between the two artists’ work. Evans first photographed Florida in 1934 when it was not much more than an exotic travel destination, and continued up until his death in 1975. Meanwhile, Samoylova, born 1984 in Russia, only started her documentation of the Southern state in 2016, when it had grown to be one of the most populous states and biggest economies by gross domestic product.
The exhibition starts in a narrow corridor with postcards from Florida, dating from 1900-1930. It then opens up into a room that juxtaposes the black and white gelatin silver prints of Evans’ early Florida works with Samoylova’s large digital color prints.
Evans’ documentation depicts Florida as a strange yet exciting playground, contrasting modest people living in shacks with affluent visitors, villas and a developing tourism industry. Samoylova’s photos, on the other hand, are much less descriptive, focusing on reconstructing a surrealism through careful framing of the seemingly banal everyday scenes.
The exhibition continues into two rooms following similar themes, swapping the early black-and-white works by Evans for his later paintings and polaroids, but incorporating a similar dichotomy between Evans’ and Samoylova’s work. Evans depicts the architecture of early Florida, which is humble yet clearly commercialized by advertising signs of either local business activities or nationally known brands.
Most evident is a picture titled “Florida Roadside” from 1941, which shows a shanty-like wooden structure with multiple signs for soft drinks, including Coca-Cola and Dr. Pepper. The crude architecture seems to be almost from a different century than the advertisement boards, but that was what Florida was like in the early 20th century — a place of developing potential, not yet fulfilled.
Alternatively, Samoylova focuses on the Florida that is nowadays almost stereotypical, but in peculiar contexts that diverge from the cliche. One such picture is her 2019 “Roadside Gun Shop, Port Orange.” The photo shows the side of a one-story building plastered in a quintessentially Floridian turquoise-green. However, the wall sports multiple black silhouettes of many different types of guns. The juxtaposition of the tropical architecture with the detailed weapon silhouettes mirrors larger conflicts in the Floridian identity.
The exhibition of Evans’ and Samoylova’s photographs serves as an incredible point of reference. Their works tell as much about the past and present of Florida as they raise questions about what the state is and where it is headed.
In the farthest back room in the exhibition space, a group of Samoylova’s photos depict the current state of Florida: On one wall, an empty, overgrown lot with a modest two-story building in the background, and on the other, high-rise condominium complexes growing out of a jungle. An old image of Florida is fading away, leaving behind a man-made space reclaimed by nature. Elsewhere, new developments continue to eat away the natural landscape, all while the climate situation continues to deteriorate.
If anything, “Floridas” opens up a conversation about this troubled land through its excellently curated gallery space and the artists’ wonderfully strange and reality-exposing works.
Contact Erwin Chen at [email protected].