St. Augustine Years

St. Augustine Years is an ongoing photographic exploration of Florida's complexities and cultural landscape in the nation's oldest city while introspecting my personal identity as a native Floridian.

St. Augustine Years is an ongoing, multi-faceted project that explores Florida’s cultural landscape and complexities specifically in the “nation’s oldest city”, St. Augustine, Florida. St. Augustine is tourist-driven during the sweltering Florida summers, and holiday light illuminated winters, a home to an inviting swell unlike any other place in Florida, and a haven for retirees and young people alike. With all of city’s desirability, its abundant history bleeds into daily life in the town outside of its tourist traps. The now quaint and attractive neighborhoods of downtown St. Augustine were once the scene of protests and confrontations during the St. Augustine Civil Rights Movement in 1964, throughout the years of American slavery, and in its years as the Floridian colony of many brutal nations. Vilano Beach, known for being a time capsule of a once bustling community of hippies and artists, is now being overrun with the development of big hotels. Though being a hotspot for residents and visitors, St. Augustine is piece of a larger portrait of Florida’s political, cultural, and environmental complexities.

Rooted in my own evolving connection to the state, it has become important for me to create photographs that reveal different forms of the Floridian identity within St. Augustine residents. Florida presents equal opportunity and challenge, especially as a young, female artist and arts educator. Despite my passion for creation, I have felt burdened by news headlines of seemingly never-ending budget cuts affecting my friends in the arts and myself or wondering where Sandy will go when her home at the Magic Beach Motel will crumble in demolition and be replaced with multi-million dollar houses. It felt helpless, like my Florida is disappearing, its familiar grasses and trees, sand between my toes, and its people.

However, being inspired by these trying times, I have followed friends and strangers as means to explore myself in a space that fluctuates in familiarity. The photographs reveal a space where ones self-expression is rooted in Florida as a refuge, a dream, or a place that is better than where they were before, whether someone is here for college, for vacation during the Fourth of July, or they have lived here their whole life. Since moving to North Florida, I have found that my Florida is still here, and it lives on through what I used to think was only back in my hometown. It lives through tan, tattooed, worn skin, the fisherman at Vilano that only catches for fun, a cigarette split after sharing pupusas with a family at the inlet, and conversations in an old Florida sunroom on a Friday evening. St. Augustine Years weaves contrasting perspectives together of what this city means to and for them that illustrates grander ideas, and often misunderstandings, of Florida.

St. Augustine Years is both a reflection and a revelation, illustrating my own evolving relationship with Florida and creating an intimate portrait of its vast richness. These photographs have allowed me to investigate what my eye has been trained to see, thus truly being honest about the work I create and presenting myself indirectly through portraits of others. Florida’s physical and cultural landscape has always been part of my work, most often, unconsciously. As I continue to grow up and around the state, I am learning that this has shaped my visual language as much as my sense of self. Through my photo-based practices, what began as a familiarity in photographs evolved into a space for introspection and discovery. Through the many stories and hours of conversation that reveal themselves in each image, St. Augustine Years is an intimate portrait of a St. Augustine’s pocket of Florida’s vast richness and loud voice.