Floridian Edge
By Bill Yates
Artist: Bill Yates
Project: Sweetheart Roller Skating Rink
Description: In the early 1970s, photographer Bill Yates spent seven months documenting the patrons of the Sweetheart Roller Skating Rink in central Florida. For forty years, the project sat forgotten until, at the urging of his family, Yates began to process the negatives. His black-and-white images echo those of the master photographers Garry Winogrand and Diane Arbus; in candid scenes of life at the roller rink, Yates manages to convey the unexpectedly profound, with a Floridian edge.
The photographs have been exhibited at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans and are being released as a book by Fall Line Press.