Andy Sweet, full name Andrew John Sweet, was a young photographer living and working in Miami Beach in the late 1970s.
Talented, jovial and enthusiastic, his life and his more than promising photographic journey were cut short on October 16, 1982, the day of his assassination in Miami Beach at the age of 29.
Andy’s aesthetic is as refreshing as his colors. He rejected all formalism. His vision is a snapshot of the life of a neglected community that he knew and had the privilege of photographing.
Andy admired the work of Diane Arbus, and like her, deviated from the notion of conscious and constructed artistic creation. What mattered to him is pure and full photography. He knew that he was an artist, but his aesthetics, his reflection and his ego required that he move away from all artifice to achieve exactly the shape he wished to give to his photography. He was intuitive, but sure of himself.
Every click of his camera shutter was an affirmation.
Andy Sweet left a considerable body of work which testified from a young age of a very mature photographic acuity. His photographs are the testimony of a particularly dense and joyful period of Miami Beach, little known and little represented in the aura that was built around this flagship city of Florida.
The exhibition “Andy Sweet – Miami Beach 70’s” is the first exhibition organized in Europe about this photographer. It was born from the meeting between Edward Christin and Valérie Kersz in Miami in 2021.
Andy Sweet : Miami Beach 70’s
Until November 17, 2022
Atelier/Galerie Taylor
7 rue Taylor 75010 Paris
www.galerie-taylor.fr
