A CITY COMING APART, EARLY 80'S MIAMI

    I got a call from journalist Brett Sokol last year. He wanted me to help identify people he'd seen in vintage 1980's Coconut Grove photographs. They are included in his new book, "We Are Everywhere and We Shall Be Free", a collection of incredible photographs taken by Charles Hashim on the streets of Miami between 1977 and 1983.

   Carl Hiaasen wrote, "Hashim's cool photographs are a wild, free-falling flashback to South Florida in the late 70's and early 80's".

 

   That's when the King Mango Strut began. Hashim was there to capture it 

 

 

 

in its early virginal, exuberance,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

along with the Goombay parade (1979),

 

 

the Grove Cinema,

 

 

 

 

and the fun we had in 1980's Peacock Park (when you could still see the water). 

 

 

 
    Another fan wrote:

What emerges from Charles Hashim’s previously unseen photographs in this book — all lovingly transferred from his original 35mm negatives — is an intimate portrait of a city coming apart at the seams, with the old social order crumbling and everything up for grabs. Pioneering gay rights activists, outlaw bikers, and libertine punk rockers duke it out for room to breathe with the Ku Klux Klan and religious revivalists. A new Miami was being born, and here's the proof of its growing pains in all their over the top splendor.
 

 

Charles Hashim:  Motorcycle drag race, Opa-locka, circa 1979

The book is available now at Books & Books where it will be presented on Tuesday, Dec. 13, at 7 pm. 

Please join Charles Hashim, as well as fellow Miami artists, who will discuss "We are Everywhere" and photography in Miami. Brett Sokol will moderate this free, public event.

 

When:
Tuesday, December 13, 2016 at 7pm

Where:
Books & Books, 265 Aragon Avenue, Coral Gables, FL 33134

 

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