Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief, described Florida as too flat, too hot and too damp, “and it has too many things that can kill you.”
To balance this honest assessment, she added that if she were an orchid hunter, “I wouldn’t have seen this space as sad and vacant–I think I would have seen it as acres of opportunity where the things I loved were waiting to be found.”
Whether it’s a mythical Fountain of Youth or a modern fortune hunt based on real estate or orchid poaching, new Floridians move here to find treasure, but a real pay off is learning how to see a different type of beauty.
Horizons in the Sunshine State run, well, horizontally so the aspect ratio resembles that of a television or social media post.
My photo was taken at an overlook on Alligator Alley.
Clyde Butcher, the famous Florida photographer, uses black-and-white photography to give clouds and sky the same importance as the land. Summer thunderheads against a wide sky give a gray scale balance to a flat low horizon.
In contrast, mountains in the Pacific Northwest draw the eye up in a vertical line.
Keith Bellissimo took this photo at a conservation greenway in northwestern Ft. Lauderdale.
Looking down captures another reality
The other gift that Florida may provide is “seeing small”. A single colorful flower against a cypress stump or red leaves blown against the brown of a scrub pine can relay impressions that skew differently than views of wider vistas. These small snapshots of a split-second of nature capture a feeling that a larger truths are just out of sight in the swamp or scrub.
The Highwaymen, a group of Black artists who roamed the state in the 1950s, used vibrant colors to add drama to idealized Florida landscapes. Low horizons, wide skies and colors of light that are often seen in Florida sunsets, but rarely in art, offer the viewer a look at an idealized Florida.
An artist’s eye can only do so much, though, when it comes to mitigating humidity, bugs and heat. That’s why trips into nature or vistas are ways to distill impressions of Florida.
The “acres of opportunity” that Orlean described are the creations of imagination and desire. These all-too-human traits are the foundation for the perception of beauty, and the reality of a flat, humid landscape is only the jumping off place for visitors who want to adapt to Florida’s unusual beauty.
