In the late 1970s, more than 20,000 elderly Jews, many of them Holocaust survivors and transplants from the Tri-state area or Canada, lived in South Beach, Florida – the storied Miami neighbourhood nestled between Biscayne Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. This area of less than two square miles became akin to a modern-day shtetl, reminiscent of the tightly knit, predominantly Jewish pre-World War II Eastern European villages.

Shtetl in the Sun, on loan from the Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU, lovingly captures the ferocious strangeness of this place through the eyes of Andy Sweet, one of the most dynamic young American photographers of the late 1970s.  Photographed between 1977 and 1980, Sweet’s work showcases a distinct aesthetic and cultural moment in South Beach: a rich portrait of lives that unfolded between the paparazzi-chronicled Beach visits of Dean Martin in the 1950s and 60s, and Madonna’s reign in the 1990s. His photographs dispel the stereotype of 1970s South Beach being “God’s Waiting Room.”  Instead, the images capture the community’s daily rhythms in all their beach-strolling, deli-noshing and cha-cha dancing glory.

On view in Canada for the first time, the Museum of Jewish Montreal has put Shtetl in the Sun in conversation with the tongue-in-cheek sculptures of Canadian contemporary ceramicist Jonah Strub. Irreverent, extravagant, and kitsch, Strub’s figures appear to be taken straight from the candy-coloured scenes caught on film by Sweet. Together, the works highlight an emblematic and instantly recognizable North American Jewish phenomenon and figure – the Snowbird – whose vibrancy resonates across time, regions, and generations.

Shtetl in the Sun: Andy Sweet’s South Beach 1977-1980 is a project of the Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU and the family of Andy Sweet.