These photos show what life in Miami Beach was like in the 1970s

Photographer David Godlis’s new book, “Godlis Miami,” (Reel Art Press, 2021) is a nostalgic romp through Miami Beach in the 1970s. The book takes us down memory lane to a place and time long gone through a collection of 100 quirky black-and-white photos spread across 128 pages.

Godlis made the photos for “Godlis Miami” over a 10-day stretch when he was a 22-year-old photo student in 1974. He credits this visit as being the first time he made photographs he actually liked.

As he says in his introduction to the book:

“I first went to Miami Beach when I was a kid in the 1950s. There are black and white snapshots of me sitting on the beach, wearing my Davy Crockett T-shirt, squinting under the palm trees. My grandparents had retired there. For Jewish Eastern European immigrants, who had lived out their working life on the streets of New York City, retiring to sunshine, warm weather, beaches and palm trees was a slice of heaven. For a kid visiting in the 1950s and early 1960s, it was like going to Jewish Disneyland. Goodbye snow. Hello coconuts. And so, when I returned to Miami Beach in 1974, with a camera, all these memories of Florida came flowing back to me. As I tripped the shutter over and over, taking pictures on those beaches I had walked upon as a little kid, everything clicked. Pun intended.”

I’ve never been to Miami. And to be honest, I only know about it from TV shows I watched growing up like “Miami Vice.” And every year, I read some of the news coming out of Art Basel. But this book is a window into a world I’ve never known and never really seen.

Godlis’s photos are endlessly quirky, just like the place he found in 1974 while roaming around clicking the shutter on his camera. Every page seems to jump alive with indelible portraits of the people surrounded by scenes dripping with a serious dose of character unique to the time and place in which they were made.

In Sight is The Washington Post’s photography blog for visual narrative. This platform showcases compelling and diverse imagery from staff members and freelance photographers, news agencies and archives. If you are interested in submitting a story to In Sight, please complete this form.

You can buy “Godlis Miami” here or here. You can see more work by Godlis on his website.

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Credits

Photo editing and production by Kenneth Dickerman