‘Outdoor Enclosures’ 2020/21

Ever since I started photographing in the early 90’s I felt drawn to abandoned places, like the old industrial buildings in north Rhine Westphalia in Germany, no longer needed or serving any purpose. I guess it is a fascination for the human artifacts from an optimistic and fast growing past times.

Now in Miami, with very few industrial sights, or gloomy grey skies, this beautiful and somehow strange park on the island of Key Biscayne captured my attention. Few remaining signs had been left behind from what was one of the largest zoological gardens in the country. Slightly unkept and with a wild lushness it is now a quiet and magical place, no longer ‘guarding’ the exotic animals that used to populate the rather small cages back in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. Today it serves as a public park used for occasional picnics, a bike-tour or a weekend-stroll with the family, a lush location next to the busy beaches of Key Biscayne, taken over by peacocks and iguanas.

There is a strange quietness and melancholia hanging over the area, if you have a sense for these things, you can feel that this beautiful place also has a different past.

Before the zoological garden of Miami was relocated to its present location in South Miami, hurricane ‘Betsy’ had destroyed much of this old zoo on Key Biscayne in 1965, killing many of the 1200 animals that were left to drown in their cages, or died from panic attacks.

The location was naturally in a very exposed danger and flood-zone and when the hurricane hit, it was simply too late to get to it in time to safe the animals, a sad past that was somehow still hanging over this place.

In 2020 I finally decided to bring my camera and to dive deeper into the subject, using this park as a backdrop for what I wanted to be subtle color ‘landscape’ depictions.

I was trying to create a certain urgency in the pictures while showing nothing but nature and some strangely naive paintings on the walls of the old cages.

A few month after starting the project, the park was ‘remodeled’, repainted and cleaned up, leaving very little of the special atmosphere that I had encountered there in the first place.

Stephan Goettlicher

‘Outdoor Enclosures’ 2020/21