UnWelcome to Miami by Rochelle Oliver
It was the sort of thing nightmares are made of. Hordes of
men and women armed with guns walking the streets. Their accents, punctuated
with sounds that indicate they’re from the same tribe. These foreigners lurked
around every corner. They came by air, by foot and by car. I was a hostage in
my own backyard. On Memorial Day, May 28, 2012, the police, that is, were
everywhere.
Nearly $2 million was spent to deter and detain party-goers
during Urban Beach Week – a four-day affair. The money was used to employ 600
officers, an air chopper, high-tech surveillance observation towers, a
DUI checkpoint and a one-way traffic loop. I decided to go to South
Beach, armed with only my Canon G10, to find out for myself: Are black people
really this dangerous?
This series of images counters the racist comments being
perpetrated by the media, the police and the noisemakers (not to be confused
with the masses).
Bold and Beautiful
I saw people of all
shades and sizes commingling and laughing. I struck up a conversation with a
detective from Hialeah who said, ‘there are people wearing outfits they have no
right to be wearing.’ She snickered as she said this. I replied with a smile
and told her, ‘yeah, but that happens year around. You know, in the wintertime
all the beached whales are on the shore trying to get a tan.’ She turned away
from me.
I didn’t understand why the sight of black barely naked
bodies was so disturbing. After all, Miami Beach is topless-city central.
Arguably, I’ve seen other women’s titties more often than I have seen my own.
Purpose: I took photos that explored
the nakedness of people with white skin and black skin. I tried to capture
Miami Beach for what it is: A place where people – clothed, unclothed, fat,
tall, tucked or taped – can enjoy being kissed by the sun.
Lighting: The fact that the sun was high in the sky helped to
further my point. It provided a sharp contrast that forced me (and hopefully
people who view these pictures) to place people into a box and ask what’s the
difference?
But something was amiss. In the background, palm trees and
observation towers were fighting for the same space. The palm trees were
losing.
Police Presence
The ultimate cost of
Beach Week 2012 cannot be calculated in dollars. Business owners said traffic
was slow because it was difficult to access the shops and restaurants. I
approached two men from Mississippi who attended Miami Memorial Weekend last
year. They said that all the police enforcement made them feel uncomfortable.
Purpose: I tried
to capture the scale and voyeur nature of the police presence. I did a 360 from
the visitor’s POV – looking at the cops – and the cop’s POV, too.
Parking was prohibited along main streets. Along Ocean
Drive, sidewalks were blocked off with a maze-work of barricades, which forced
people to walk on the streets without access to covered walkways. This was
supposedly done to stop dine-and-dash patrons. But if anyone wanted to skip out
on a check, all they had to do was walk onto the street. A waiter would easily
get caught up with the trappings before catching the thief.
The observation towers, however, proved to be the most
obtrusive. They pieced the blue Miami skyline. They showed up in my pictures
even when I tried to work around them. They will surely appear in the backdrop
of the thousands that descended onto the Beach for vacation. And naturally, the
images will be seen by millions on Facebook giving new meaning to the saying,
“Welcome to Miami, Bitch!”
I gave myself a mini-assignment at the Bon Iver concert at the Fillmore last week: Try to make interesting frames, no matter how many people are standing in front of me. I brought my Leica point-and-shoot and used the zoom and the "high grain" setting (at 1600 iso) to shoot in the low and flashing light. The biggest struggle I had was holding the frame steady as the light changed and the people in front of me moved around. Though the zoom got me closer to the musicians, I found that pulling back to a wider frame held things more steady and exposed more of the contrast between the bright stage lights and the darkened stage. By going wide, I could fill the frame with more information, even when there was less light. Instead of making portraits of the musicians, I tried to capture images that reflected the atmosphere of Bon Iver's show, particularly in the moments when individual performers took the spotlight and everything else on stage faded away.
