Introduction 
A Historical Snapshot - Early Years - Visitors - Diversity
Modern Culture - South Beach - Pop Culture
The Art and Architecture - Art Deco A Tourist's Perspective
Works Cited |
 |  Photograph from HSAF (Bush 33) ulia Tuttle owned 640 acres of land in the Miami area on which she asked Henry Flagler to run his train through. After having refused on several occasions, a major freeze hit that covered most of Flagler's building area, but not Miami (Bush 6). Flagler was finally convinced that running the railroad through the area was a sound investment. This business clash might explain why the photographs were taken separately. It also might be attributed to the fact that Tuttle and Flagler were unlike to have met in a way that would facilitate a photograph of the two. It would have just been easier to snap two shots of them separately. These are the types of insights into history that the photographs provide. The photographs above of Tuttle and Flagler reflect this type of business tension. Both photographs were shot similiarly. Face and upper body portraits can have the effect of describing what a person is like. These photographs on the other hand have an effect of placing the person in context to history and their roles in it because the whole of their body is pictured. The body language in the photograph gives a sense of rigidity and sternness. Both of these people were firm in their business interactions. They are also presented as well dressed, head to toe, signifying their professionalism. One of the interesting things about these photographs is that they were taken separately. Often times, when important business transactions are made a photograph will be taken of the involved parties shaking hands or the like. It's apparent that at this time such photographs were not "prized" like they are today. What is more important about the selling of the Miami lands were the parties involved and the depiction of each of the people invovled. J  Uncredited (Bush 27) Historian Gregory Bush tags Miami as the "Instant City." Railroads were run through it, developers constructed large houses and buildings, highways were laid, and winter tourists poured into the most tropical location in the U.S. (Bush 28). Flagler's Royal Palm Hotel (pictured above) was one of the first structures to be built, and it became the city's social and economic center, and a tourist town from the beginning. This photograph shows a building that is unlike most in the country, especially for a city that began non-native population only decades before. The following passage from project Foreman John Sewell's memoirs discusess the breaking ground as a photographic occasion. ...About that time Mr. J.N. Chamberlain, a photographer, arrived as he had arranged to rent a studio in the Royal Palm Casino when it was built and wanted to see the site for the proposed city. He had his camera with him and wanted to take a picture of the first work breaking ground for the Royal Palm... He continues on explaining how he had all his African-American laborers come down for a picture with him and twenty-five years later tried to commemorate the occasion by duplicating the photograph (which he was unable to do due to the dispersion of the workers) (Bush 35).  Ralph Munroe - http://www.historical-museum.org/collect/munroe/munroe.htm  Ralph Munroe - http://www.historical-museum.org/collect/munroe/munroe.htm Just as Jackson and O'Sullivan documented the West, early Miami photographer Ralph Munroe documented this exotic landscape and its residents. Taken in 1884 and '85, respectively, these Munroe photographs are similar to those taken all over the country in newly settled areas. The photo of the Cape Florida Lighthouse on Key Biscayne achieves the goal of presenting how unique the tropical landscape of the beach is. He also made the extra effort to either wade into the water or use a small boat so as to get an effective shot of both the lighthouse and the house as seen from the water (where a ship would see it). In the second photograph the Bahamian women are pictured very formally. Miami was founded as a city segregated by skin colour, so this photograph seems to picture the "other side" as more than just laborers. |
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