DocuFlorida features photographic and image-based work and is focused not the current environment and landscapes of Florida, the Gulf Coast, and the Southeast Region of the U.S. The exhibition is intended as an iteration of Documerica, the photographic documentary project that was sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency in the 1970s.

Documerica documented the environment as framed by larger systems of change. Established in 1971, the Environmental Protection Agency hired more than 100 photographers to document specific issues and interactions with the environment. In a time of political uncertainty, deception, and intrigue, North America’s land and waterways suffered from neglect. Through photographs, Documerica became a project of investigation to fuel a movement for change, and a vital archive of our mutable environment.

DocuFlorida aims to explore similar conditions with a focus on the local; an interpretive lens that addresses the socio-cultural and socio-spatial conditions of natural and build environments of our larger region, which is deeply informed by river systems, gulf waters, and their associated industries and economic enterprises. Establish, emerging, and nascent artists and image-makers answered a call for art that considered what landscapes shaped their lives and how the camera mediates these environment in vernacular and abstract forms. By zooming in on a coastal and local level, we hope to examine these points of view alongside our global communities at large.