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The historic Seven Mile Bridge and the legacy of Henry Flagler’s ambitious Overseas Railway. This project traces the remnants of Flagler’s grand vision to connect Key West to mainland Florida—a monumental act of capitalist idealism and environmental transformation.

Fall Everglades Study 2024. Measuring Subsidence. A middle school student from the Tribe, volunteers to measure the soil subsidence during a stop on the Fall Study in 2024. Daniel Boardman from Water Resources explains the procedure and the importance of conducting the measurements on tree islands to measure the continuale losses of Miccosukee wetlands. Over the past several months, I have had an ongoing collaboration with the Miccosukee Tribe, one of Florida’s two Native American tribes. I have been documenting the Miccosukee’s history of resistance, sovereignty, and their relationship to the land, focusing on how these histories intersect with broader environmental and social struggles. The tribe’s rejection of New Deal-era government assistance, symbolized by the historic marker reading “just leave us alone,” exemplifies their enduring ethos of self-determination. Their distinction as the only tribe to never sign a treaty with the U.S. government, along with their strategic use of international sovereignty to gain tribal recognition through Fidel Castro’s Cuba, further underscores their resistance to assimilation and erasure. By situating these narratives within the physical and cultural landscape of the Everglades, I have been exploring how wilderness itself has been mobilized as a colonial concept, often disconnected from its indigenous histories.

Fall Everglades Study 2024.

Hudson River Valley painting school (with criteria/language for wilderness designation). 2025. Altered digital image of historic painting. Asher Durand's Kindred Spirits (1849) shows Thomas Cole and William Cullen Bryant, a poet of the age, discussing the beauty of nature. A wilderness study is conducted to determine which parts of a preserve, if any, should be proposed to Congress for inclusion in the national wilderness preservation system. Only Congress can formally designate lands as wilderness. Under the Wilderness Act of 1964: A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man …. An area of wilderness is further defined to mean in this Act an area of undeveloped Federal land retaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation, which is protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions. WILDERNESS CRITERIA The following criteria were used to evaluate lands in the original preserve and adjacent areas for wilderness eligibility: * The area is at least 5,000 acres or of sufficient size to make practicable its preservation and use in an unimpaired condition. * The earth and its community of life are untrammeled by humans, where humans are visitors and do not remain. * The area is undeveloped and retains its primeval character and influence without permanent improvements or human habitation. * The area generally appears to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature, with the imprint of humans’ work substantially unnoticeable. * The area is protected and managed to preserve its natural condition. * The area offers outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation.

Tamiami Highway US-41, 2025. Infrared photograph. Fine Art Inkjet Print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Metallic. 23.5 x 16.5 in

“Pohoan Checkish (Just Leave us Alone)”. Monument Lake, FL. 2025 Infrared photograph. Fine Art Inkjet Print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Metallic. 23.5 x 16.5 in

Crest taken from abandoned Ivy Ridge facility. Set on fire in Wonder Valley, Southern California. 2024

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At the line-up moments before the annual Martin Luther King day parade. Pictured here is local middle school’s homecoming court. Belle Glade, FL 2016

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My neighbor Pookie at Traina's nightclub in downtown Belle Glade. 2019. FL.

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Custard Apple Forest. FL. 2020. Originally covering the entire Southend of the Lake, now only 95% remains.

The Roof Garden Inn, 2018 (The Martin Luther King Day Parade passes in front of the former place of residence of Author Zora Neale Hurston. In the 1930’s, Ms. Hurston stayed there as she was gathering research and content for her novel Their Eyes are Watching God. Some of the events in the novel took place in Belle Glade, Florida. The most significant event was the Storm of 1928 in which over 3,000 people perished.)) The building is now a single room rental apartment building with no historic designation. Martin Luther King Blvd, downtown Belle Glade. 2019

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The Disston Dredge Boat Shipwreck, 2020. Between 1886 and 1889, a steam-powered dredge boat met its end in the waters between Torry Island and Belle Glade—about four miles from town. This shipwreck marks a pivotal but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to transform South Florida’s vast wetlands into habitable farmland. The vessel belonged to Hamilton Disston, a wealthy saw manufacturer from Philadelphia who, in 1881, purchased four million acres of South Florida for just 25 cents per acre. The deal, one of the largest land purchases by a private individual in U.S. history, came with a monumental challenge: drain the swamplands to make them viable for agriculture and settlement. Disston’s dredge boat was the first to attempt cutting a canal from Lake Okeechobee to Miami. However, the plan was abandoned when the crew encountered a fossilized coral reef—an immovable natural barrier. The canal project was redirected, and the dredge instead created what became known as the 13 Mile Canal. According to Lawrence E. Will’s historical account, the dredge ultimately broke free from its towboat during a storm and sank. When Palm Beach County archaeologist Chris Davenport discovered the shipwreck in 2007, he observed severe burn damage. His analysis suggests a likely “blow back”—a common but dangerous malfunction where burning coal could erupt from the engine's firebox. Crews often had to throw the smoldering coal onto the deck to prevent explosion, risking onboard fires in the process. Blow backs were considered serious errors and could even be viewed as sabotage. Today, the remnants of Disston’s dredge rest silently underwater, a rare and poignant relic of Florida’s earliest drainage efforts and the bold—if sometimes doomed—ambitions of its pioneers.

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Martin Luther King Parade passes through downtown Belle Glade, FL. 2018

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Linford inside his home in Lake Harbour, FL 2016. Linford Me come here, me do 16 year pon the contract back and forward from Jamaica, me travel 16 year and at the end of the 16 year me marry here. Work with big sugar, me work from august to April. Me marry to Clewiston, next year come 30 years on mi own. But it alright, those days alright, we make money. The contract, it help here and it help the people in Jamaica, you know specially you have kids. You buy your tv you buy your fridge you buy anything little thing. A little pick up truck. Me buy one motorcycle here carry it down. Me left Jamaica 18 year old. Young, strong, that time me have me second kids in Jamaica. But those days good! Me come and work and sometimes when me go home me carry 3,4 thousand dollars. And buy stuff, pales 2-3 hundred dollar. Clear it at Miami. That time you have to go to Miami and take the plane. The company bus take you to Miami, and you go down there where your baggage and they charge you by the pound, 40 , 50 cents a pound. And when you go to Jamaica u clear it in Jamaica but u don’t pay for it. Cause you carry like a car, or Moto u have to pay for it customs but those days we usually carry a big trunk and suitcase and box. Those days was nice, the 13 years me don’t regret it. You know me build a house in Jamaica out of it. Me buy 3 piece of property in Jamaica out of it. My kids got their clothes, me carry fridge tv, so it good. But those days not coming back. But me enjoy it baby, im telling you. Jamaica got better, things there develop better and belle glade was good that time- you no short a nothing. For that time u got big sugar, okeelanta, glades sugar, Atlantic, talisman. Okeelanta got bout 2-3 thousand man. Big sugar might carry bout 3-4 thousand. They have houses run-on, pelican lake, Miami locks, Rita … a lot of camp those days. So when weekend time, evening time come, you ride down the camp and look for your friend. We left there and go to Streamline mostly and go party coming all 3-4 o’clock. At that time police not so bad like, aint no gun-shooting all that. They would rob you a belle glade if you’re foolish. Belle glade is a place, man go there go buy them girl weekend time, women rob them. And the bus from okeelanta run from like 6-7 in the evening some of them till 4 o’clock in the morning. Those days good. Go to ft Lauderdale Miami palm beach go shopping the flea market. Buy up a lot of stuff to carry home. In those days, they have a thing called committee, they give out farm worker card. And you go to selection, white man come from up here, and come down here and select you. After they select you , you go to Kingston , Hanover street, be there for 2 or 3 day. And you take final test. You take eye test, you take teeth test, you take every test, you take x-ray, they look all yo but them see u a pile um stuff , so they well test you. And give you injection and you come so you don’t come up sick. You come up fit. Every year they test you will the same thing but these guys come and do their own test. But big sugar, from the first year you come, if you can work good manage the work good, every year they send a request for you. You do a test same place Hanover street and they pick up for the airport. And you land Miami and the company big sugar bus come pick u up and take you to the camp. They have a card called i95 and they take it from you . And you have id you have a photo stamp on it so when you come to camp you have supervisor, they take it away and when you go back home, u can have it. And the liaison officer call everybody name and you get back your id. And they stamp it. And you go back home. And next year august or October when you come they send back for you. You if you come here wanna run away, you can run way and go married. Me never run away when me come here, me never leave the camp, me come the 1st of august and me cut cane till last of April In Osceola camp, one time me go buy plate of food, one guy there say, give me dollar, me say, get out me face. Go work. Young little guy, me say get out of me face go work. He said you Jamaican got money, me said me got enough for me. And me left and go in the restaurant. Me don’t give him neither. Belle glade is, the town is nice, but some of the people down there, they not so nice. They steal, they will watch a man put a gun to your head and shoot you, and when they police come no body give them and say him do it, they shield one another. Like me, me quiet me don’t want body come to house come bother.

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A bible on the dashboard of Mr. Brown's car. 2027. Belle Glade, FL.

Mr. Brown, Bell Glade, FL. 2028

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Dred and David Wallace, who operated Dee’s Lounge, is pictured on the right. He originally arrived to the Glades from Jamaica in the 80’s to cut sugarcane under contract with the sugar companies. David decided to stay after the mechanization of sugarcane harvesting and operated Dee's Lounge, a popular nightclub in downtown Belle Glade. 2015

Aloe fields next to the dike on Lake Okeechobee in Lake Harbor, FL 2018.

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Local Belle Glade, Haitian resident clearing the empty patch of land next to his home for planting. 2017

Angie’s son playing outside of the motel on Main Street that they rented and lived in for several months. Belle Glade, FL 2015.

During a domino tournament at Fadda Traina’s club in downtown Belle Glade. 2018

Slim from Barbados is a common face and a big dancer at the bars in downtown Belle Glade. During the day, he drives the trucks that transport the sugarcane from the field to the mills. Fadda Traina’s Club, 2017

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A Haitian resident gets a haircut from a street barber in Downtown Belle Glade, FL 2017

A typical scene at the loading ramp during an afternoon in downtown Belle Glade. A worker on the left takes leftover corn from a bus used to transport field laborers to the farms. The buses meet in the early morning (5am) for pick-up and in the afternoon for drop off at the ramp. On the right, folks use the bus’s shade to play dominos. The loading ramp is the heart of downtown Belle Glade. 2018

This traditional frame house, constructed in 1937, is rented out to Haitian farm workers in downtown Belle Glade. 2016

Downtown Belle Glade, FL 2017. Sugarcane fire in the background.

At Maverne's Hole in the Hole restaurant in downtown Belle Glade, 2016. During domino tournaments, players compete for first place and $40.

Dee’s Lounge in downtown Belle Glade. 2015

Sugarcane harvesting is done by heavy machinery, but planting sugarcane is still done by hand.

Canal Point. 2016

Uncle Bill died months after checking himself in to a nursing home in West Palm Beach after his 90th birthday. He lived in Belle Glade for most of his life and couldn’t bear being trapped inside his home when he became ill. Uncle Bill was notorious for his dancing and for being Belle Glade’s best pool player.

One of Willy Lee’s crop dusters, who operates the Belle Glade airport. 2018 “My grandaddy was one of the first settlers around the lake. Jess Lee. My name is Jesse D Lee. He settled out on Torry Island. First time he came here was 1905 went out to the island on one fo those old dug out canoes that the seminoles had. He went up there hunting and he wind up homesteading some of that land over there. First thing, he homesteaded in Miami, right there on the Miami river, on land that’s worth billions of dollars now. But it turned out it wasn’t very good farm land and he gave that up and moved up here to the island and he had already homesteaded so he couldn’t but all his brothers and his sisters, they could. And they all homesteaded and they got a 160 acres or something, and as time went on he sold off little pieces of it. And it is today some of the best farmland in this country. And it is actually and you won’t believe it, he was here before they built that dike and Torry island is actually some of the highest land around. But they built that dike and they start trapping the lake and they keep it underwater. We had to sell that land to the Water Management district back in the 50’s and was leasing it back till 1978 when they raised the lake.

T.I. cared for his dog Gator as he ran a laundromat in downtown Belle Glade. 2016

Two of three generations raised at a mechanic shop in Belle Glade. Everyone lends a hand in the family business. They were an important lifeline for me and my 98 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. 2015

Before development, there was a three mile wide belt of custard apple trees across the entire southend of the lake, from Clewiston to Canal Point. Today there is less than a hundred acres. The custard apple trees produced pond apples. The trees are a freshwater version of the mangroves.