"Liberty City, together with its families, opened its arms to me with my camera, just like Paris once did. And now they've both become for me, the City of Love. -Bruce Weber, photographer
A post on the South Florida Daily Blog this morning reminded me, once again, why we need blogs and why blogs are here to stay.
Yes, we still need the Miami Herald. And the New York Times and its Baghdad bureau.
But blogs fill in the gaps.
This morning, Rick posted an item on fashion photographer Bruce Weber's new short film, "Liberty City is like Paris."
I'd never heard of this film until I read Rick's post this morning. I did a search and couldn't find a thing written about it in the Herald.
(To be fair Miami New Times mentioned the film three weeks ago, even if staffer Kyle Munzenrieder was a little too quick to dismiss Weber as just a shooter of black and white soft porn.)
Weber, who has a home in Golden Beach, which is about as far removed from Liberty City as any place can be, shows us in his new film that beauty is all around us.
He's never forgotten the lessons he learned in Paris as a student in the early 70's when he says, "learning about photography was as easy as walking down its boulevards with my only busted up Nikon."
Weber now turns his lens on Liberty City and shows us that there's more to this wonderful Miami neighborhood than drive-by shootings and shooting galleries.
It's not the first time that Weber has drawn inspiration from - or used South Florida's sometimes forgotten neighborhoods as a backdrop.
In 1986 he shot a Calvin Klein Obsession perfume campaign on the roof of the Breakwater Hotel on Ocean Drive.
Back then, Ocean Drive was a collection of run-down, seedy hotels that had seen better days.
But "that [shoot] captivated other photographers and helped spread the word in the tightly knit fashion industry that Miami and South Beach have a certain allure for the camera," the Herald wrote two years later in 1988.
So thanks to Rick for his post. I guess the Herald will get around to writing about this sooner or later. But until then, we've still got the blogs!
