Florida has changed dramatically during my six decades as a resident. I grew up to believe that you are not a real Floridian until you’ve killed a big snake with a garden shovel. I often long for the pristine natural areas and rural country roads abundant in my childhood memories. Now old and full of both time and nostalgia, I decided to hit the backroads to see how much of real Florida still exists.
The trips led me to creating Florida Landscape photos with a nostalgic twist. Each image is shot with a hand-built diorama in the foreground featuring 1960’s era cars and highway billboards. I attempt to give the viewer the feeling I had as a seven year old-looking out the back window of the station wagon during pre-Disney family vacations.
The highway billboards of this decade lured motorists to witness animal shows with monster-sized reptiles, sea shells and helpings of pecan pie. Roadside stands sold citrus perfume, boiled peanuts, and stuffed alligator heads–in short, anything a first-time tourist would purchase .
“Finding Florida’ began for me as a nostalgia project and became a history lesson.
My images are created entirely “in-camera”. I set up a tripod and shoot a hand-built diorama carried to the location and balanced on a step ladder.
The camera’s wide-angle lens placed inches from the subject does the work to seamlessly weave together foreground and background. This technique, called forced perspective, is how early cinematographers made Godzilla and King Kong seem larger than life.
When I began the project, I wondered, “How much of Old Florida still exists?” I am a year in, and still discovering hidden gems all over the state.
I am having a blast navigating across the peninsula to chase old Florida fruit stands, family run attractions, historic downtowns and untamed wilderness. I am also learning sad truths about the state’s history. So many of the beaches, parks, restaurants, hotels, attractions I photographed were segregated until the very end of the 1960’s. As a child, I was unaware, that if, my family were black, they would be turned away from all of these places, and any resistance would risk a run-in with a small town Florida Sheriff.
The natural environment of Florida at the time, was absolute wilderness broken only by farms. Since then, overwhelming population growth and development has changed most every horizon. Thankfully, by driving and exploring, the center of the state, one can still find sweeping panoramas of open lands and Cypress canopied rivers and springs. I am eager to capture and learn more about this dynamic period of change in Florida. My goal is to create an art exhibit that people will find enjoyable, not just for the camera trickery, or the nostalgic toy cars, but a small window into Florida’s past. Bob Gibson, July 2024.
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and grew to become a roadside stand selling fresh Indian River citrus, orange blossom perfume, boiled peanuts, fireworks and stuffed Alligators.
