A Rough Sketch

In 1939 when my father was just five, he and his older brothers—the eldest only some seven years his senior—left their home in Corona, Queens, and trekked adventurously across the Grand Central Parkway to the World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. After sneaking under a fence and ripping his knickers in the process, my father proceeded to get his foot caught in a revolving door entrance to an exhibit.

After many hours and fruitless attempts to liberate his foot, the police dismantled the entire door to free him. Shaken but unharmed, they questioned my father about his name and where he lived. His brothers were hiding a short distance away, repeatedly imploring him, “Don’t tell him your name—don’t tell him your name!” Despite the ice cream bribe, somehow, my father didn’t crack and give up his identity.

Every time I have been to the Queens Museum panorama (the site of the fair) with my father, I have heard this story, notable for its consistency, if not its plausibility. How this little gang made it to the fair, how he wasn’t permanently injured, and how they managed to escape from the police have never been clarified; nevertheless, the repetition encouraged a suspension of disbelief over time. So much so that whenever I have been to see the panorama by myself, I have found myself mulling over the details and, even more suspicious, found myself telling this story repeatedly to my son.

 

Gary Monroe
Photographs: South Beach 1977–1986
Curator: Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock & Joseph Lawton

The Ildiko Butler Gallery
September 1, 2020—January 15, 2021
Fordham University at Lincoln Center 
113 West 60th Street at Columbus Avenue 
New York, NY 10023

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Fordham University's Ildiko Butler Gallery is pleased to present the photographs of Gary Monroe. Exhibited here are twenty-one gelatin silver prints made between 1977 and 1986 in South Beach, Florida, of the elderly Jewish community.

In Gary's words: South Beach was remarkable when I photographed there, which was almost daily. Actually, it was for a longer period, but that decade constitutes my being committed to making visual sense of life there. It was where Jewish people came to be together in their later years. In its way, it was a sacred place. These were the Jewish of the 'Greatest Generation,' Holocaust survivors among them; refugees from the cold northeast; working-class retirees. The average age was well into retirement. Ten years later, the Art Deco movement and other forces, including Miami Vice, and economic development, caused the demise of the old-world traditions long before attrition would have taken its toll. The lifestyle vanished as if it had never happened.

Gary Monroe, a native of Miami Beach, received a master's degree in fine arts from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1977. Since 1984 he has photographed throughout Haiti, Brazil, Israel, Cuba, India, Trinidad, Poland, France, Russia, Egypt, and in his home state of Florida. He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Florida Department of State's Division of Cultural Affairs, Florida Humanities Council, and the Fulbright Foundation. Gary's publications include The Last Resort, Florida Dreams, Life in South Beach, Miami Beach, and Haiti. He is also the author of numerous books, including The Highwaymen: Florida's African-American Landscape Painters, Harold Newton: The Original Highwayman, and Silver Springs: The Underwater Photographs of Bruce Mozert. Recently he has been photographing the impact of corporate-driven planning on the Florida landscape.

Image Credit: Gary Monroe, Sixth Street by Washington Avenue, 1978