Who: David Godlis, Lucy Sante
What: Book launch with live discussion
Where: Rizzoli Bookstore, 1133 Broadway between 25th & 26th Sts.
When: Thursday, October 28, free with advance RSVP, 6:00
Why: When last we saw photographer David Godlis, he was taking part in a November 2020 Rizzoli Zoom discussion with writer Luc Sante, Blondie cofounder and guitarist Chris Stein, and Reel Art Press music editor Dave Brolan, talking about Godlis Streets (Reel Art Press, $39.95), which features Godlis’s New York City and Boston street photography from the 1970s and ’80s. Some of us have also caught him in Lewie and Noah Kloster’s brand-new seven-minute documentary Shots in the Dark with David Godlis, in which the longtime official photographer of the New York Film Festival goes back to his CBGB days.
On October 28, Godlis will be at Rizzoli in person, joined by the recently transitioned Lucy Sante (Low Life, Kill All Your Darlings), for the launch of his newest book, Godlis Miami (Real Art Press, $39.95), comprising photos Godlis shot down south, capturing a part of South Beach that no longer exists.
David Godlis, Ladies in the Sun, Lummus Park (© GODLIS)
“I first went to Miami Beach when I was a kid in the 1950s,” he writes. “There are black and white snapshots of me sitting on the beach, wearing my Davy Crockett T-shirt, squinting under palm trees. My grandparents had retired there. For Jewish Eastern European immigrants, who had lived out their working life on the streets of New York City, retiring to sunshine, warm weather, beaches, and palm trees was a slice of heaven. For a kid visiting in the 1950s and early 1960s, it was like going to Jewish Disneyland. Goodbye, snow. Hello, coconuts. And so, when I returned to Miami Beach in 1974, with a camera, all these memories of Florida came flowing back to me. As I tripped the shutter over and over, taking pictures on those beaches I had walked upon as a little kid, everything clicked. Pun intended.”
Admission to the event is free with advance RSVP.