JOURNAL OF FLORIDA STUDIES

AN INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL OF THE IDEA AND PLACE THAT IS FLORIDA

Volume 1, Issue 3 Spring 2014

Florida Color

Photographs by Constantine Manos

The vision of Constantine Manos has been expressed both in black and white and in color, and through a variety of film and digital processes for more than 60 years. Characterized by dramatic compositions and a passion for the human detail, his most distinctive images show a passion for unyielding natural light wherever he finds it. From the spare and classic imagery of A Greek Portfolio (1972) to the southern sun-drenched saturated palette of American Color 2 (2010) Manos discovers and creates unexpectedly transcendent worlds.

Manos began photographing in Florida in 1975 and he continues to do so today. Attracted by the light, the weather, and the vibrant public life that light and weather make possible, he has long turned to the beaches and boulevards of Daytona Beach and Miami for his subjects. Manos shows us Florida as spectacle: a cacophonous cast of half-naked holiday makers, bikers, spring breakers, beauty queens, transvestites, happy drunks, and carny workers sharing space with the ill, old, lost, lonely, desperate, and homeless of the Sunshine State’s dark side. Blasted by light, often transformed into shadows thrown against a deep patina of old paint on weathered textured walls, these beautiful losers are saved by Manos’s admiration for them and their individual realities.

Manos’s Florida is not the slickly beautiful place of tourist brochures, nor is it a predictable photojournalist treatment of the state’s serious social problems. Rather it is a place of bright, brittle, and fleeting moments, like aspects of the state itself, to be appreciated for their own sakes. Like all photographs, this work shows us what has been and documents specific places and times, but these images are also something else: an artist’s interpretation of the human condition as he sees it and before our eyes, as real and certain as a shadow in the sun. ---AN

Constantine Manos was born in South Carolina in 1934 to Greek immigrant parents. Widely commissioned, published and exhibited, he has been a member of Magnum Photos since 1963. In 2003 he was awarded the Leica Medal of Excellence for American Color, from which these images have been taken.

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This is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access.

Journal of Florida Studies is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the study and appreciation of Florida. The journal features research articles, but also includes poetry, fiction, photography, and other digital arts. JFS is an outgrowth of the Center for Interdisciplinary Writing and Research (CIWR) at Daytona State College and the Florida Studies Program at the St. Petersburg Campus of the University of South Florida.

Journal of Florida Studies is not an official publication of Daytona State College or the University of South Florida. The views expressed herein are the views of the writers and not necessarily the views of DSC or USF.

ISSN: 2162-206X