Isabella Marie Garcia joins Josh Aronson to discuss his photography series Florida Boys, masculinity in crisis, the loneliness behind the Florida Man myth, and the radical potential of tenderness in the Southern landscape.
Josh Aronson: Let’s talk about some Florida history and photography.
Isabella Marie Garcia: I hadn’t heard about the Florida School for Boys before seeing your work. My background is in teaching within the juvenile justice system, so I’ve seen power imbalances between students and staff. Once I learned about your reference to that history, I went down an internet rabbit hole. How did it first come into your awareness?
JA: Probably through the State Library and Archives of Florida, on floridamemory.com. When I began Florida Boys in 2020, I wanted to better understand Florida’s photographic history. Who was I to make work about this place without knowing who came before me? I found this collection of vernacular photographs of young men in Florida—gorgeous, unintentionally beautiful images spanning the last century.
IMG: Without knowing the context, they look like workplace images. But the Florida School for Boys—opened in 1900 and closed in 2011—was the country’s largest juvenile reform school. Once you know the stories of abuse, the photographs shift; they become visual testaments to a place that held so much pain.
JA: Right. Your work also deals with confronting sites of pain and using photography to imagine beauty coming from there. I couldn’t speak to those boys, but I could imagine an alternate reality for them. What if they escaped—ran into the woods and found themselves in the beauty of Florida’s springs and parks?
IMG: That connects to my project The Photography Care Matrix, which looks at women and non-binary photographers working within carceral systems. I came to it through teaching—since juveniles can’t be photographed, I had to experiment. It led me to artists like Deborah Luster, who began photographing prisoners in Louisiana after her mother’s murder. Her tintypes allowed incarcerated people to reimagine how they saw themselves—offering an image beyond a mugshot.
JA: I saw those portraits recently. I can’t get them out of my head.
IMG: They’re haunting. For me, they show how photography can restore agency. Similarly, the boys at the reform school were punished for things like missing class or hitchhiking—acts that changed their lives entirely.
JA: Exactly. Photography can be a tool for imagining better worlds. Hearing those stories pushed me to dream up another version of their lives.
IMG: Your work feels utopian, speculative. What lens-based artists have inspired that?
JA: Florida Boys is a series of staged narrative group portraits. I’m drawn to photographers like Justine Kurland, Baldwin Lee, and Ryan McGinley—artists who built worlds with their subjects.
IMG: You worked with both Kurland and McGinley, right?
JA: Yeah. In 2017, I joined Ryan’s studio in New York. Seeing evidence of him fill buses with friends and drive into nature to photograph them—often nude, leaping through rivers or rolling in the grass—was formative. I now rent vans, fill them with young creatives, and do something similar in Florida. Later, studying with Justine Kurland showed me the other side of that: intimate, low-production shoots. Unlike Gregory Crewdson or Jeff Wall, who spend months on a single image with massive crews, Justine worked simply—just her and the subjects. That taught me how to work sensitively and independently.
IMG: Florida Boys began during the pandemic, when nature became a refuge. How did you start finding your subjects?
JA: They’re young creatives from South Florida—friends of friends, people from the community. Often, I don’t know them beforehand. My pitch is basically: “Want to get in a van for three days with strangers and make photographs?” It’s a litmus test.
IMG: That’s bold. Do you DM them?
JA: Mostly Instagram. Occasionally casting calls. You quickly know who’s right—someone open-minded, curious, collaborative.
IMG: Was there ever a fear they wouldn’t get along?
JA: Absolutely. I use reference images to guide the process—paintings, photographs, anything that conveys the tone. We discuss them before shooting, so by the time we’re in the field, it’s collaborative. I assign gestures and positions, but I leave room for people to bring themselves. I was definitely nervous the first few trips: what if no one clicked? But I learned that with care—and snacks, always snacks—you can create real camaraderie.
IMG: And during the pandemic, that must’ve felt even more precious.
JA: Totally. When life was so restricted, those trips felt like freedom. For many of the participants, it was their first time outside South Florida. It became a trade: they helped make the photographs, and in return, they got a transformative experience.
IMG: That energy—strength in numbers, especially among young queer and Brown men—feels utopian. Have you had any tense moments while traveling?
JA: A few. Once, we stopped to photograph on a train in rural Florida. One of the guys had just downed a triple-shot espresso and had to run into the bushes. Then a cop showed up saying he’d been told there were five teenagers trespassing—he saw only four. He asked where the fifth was, crossed the tracks, and by sheer luck, the guy had just finished his business. The cop asked my age—I said 29—and what we were doing. I told him, “I’m an artist. This is my work.” He let us go.
IMG: That’s my nightmare. But it underscores the care you take. These trips aren’t just carefree adventures.
JA: Exactly. I’m part camp counselor, part director—snacks, Gatorades, safety checks. Belonging in nature isn’t something everyone grows up feeling entitled to, especially here.
IMG: I relate to that as a queer Southerner. People often think you have to leave the South to be yourself. Yet your images show something else—a kind of collective belonging. How do you create that, even briefly?
JA: Through conversation and care. I ask questions, I listen. The approach comes from years of editorial work—learning how to make people comfortable. By the end of a weekend, we feel like old friends.
IMG: That reminds me of School of the Alternative in Black Mountain, where I spent two weeks with strangers and left with lifelong friendships. It’s a care-conscious container of time—like your road trips.
JA: Exactly. I went to sleepaway camp in North Carolina as a kid, and that bond—the shared experience in nature—stayed with me. These trips echo that.
JA: I’ve also been thinking about how images create belief. Seeing something in a photograph makes it more possible to imagine. Growing up in Florida, I didn’t relate to the dominant masculine energy around me—it was performative, bro-y, aggressive. These photographs create another space: one of dreamers, wanderers, sensitivity, and care. It’s the masculinity I wanted to see.
IMG: People often ask about the logistics—grants, funding, all that. How did you sustain a five-year project like this?
JA: Through multiple sources. I’m an editorial photographer, so that supports some of it. I also took on credit card debt—which I don’t recommend—but it made the project possible. And grants. Miami has great local arts funding. I didn’t get everything I applied for, but the ones I did get helped immensely.
IMG: And you shot seven hundred rolls of film?
JA: About that, yeah. For the first three years, I didn’t develop any of it. I wanted to stay in the “maker” mindset—out in the world, not editing behind a screen. Eventually the film drawer overflowed, so I processed it all at once. The lab was thrilled; the person sleeving negatives, maybe less so.
IMG: How long do you see Florida Boys continuing?
JA: It started in 2020 and it’s ongoing. I don’t feel done. Some images have been exhibited, but many participants haven’t seen their photos yet. That patience—waiting years—feels fitting.
IMG: I love that slowness. In an instant-gratification culture, film forces us to wait.
JA: Exactly. It gives space to reflect.
IMG: Let’s talk about composition. I’ve seen your sketches—these pre-visualized diagrams of where everyone stands.
JA: Right. I scout locations, photograph them empty, then create layouts using digital cutouts—figures, props, light references. It helps save time on set. Once we’re there, I guide placement and gesture, but the subjects bring their own presence.
IMG: And most of them aren’t models.
JA: No, they’re musicians, filmmakers, designers. They respond well to having a structure, but they fill it in with themselves.
IMG: How do you see Florida Boys within Florida’s current climate—the politics, the tightening of expression?
JA: It’s impossible to ignore the pressures here, but I also feel grateful for the creative community that persists despite it. I’ve lived in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles—but what we have in Florida is unique. There’s space to grow, and to build something new.
IMG: And visually, your work shows that—these boys in school uniforms, escaping the rigidity of institutions.
JA: Exactly. They’re stepping into openness.
IMG: What’s your take on staged narrative versus documentary?
JA: I came to photography through filmmaking, so storytelling has always been central. I love documentary work, but I question whether true objectivity exists. Every image is filtered through perspective. If that’s the case, why not lean into it? Staging lets me build the world I wish existed.
IMG: And how do you approach light and framing?
JA: Mostly natural light. I think about depth—foreground, middle ground, background—as a way to hold a viewer’s eye in the image. Each figure creates rhythm and tension within that space.
IMG: Final question: how does Florida Boys add to the lineage of photographers before you?
JA: It contributes a more open, queer, and tender lens to the visual history of the American South—a softness that hasn’t existed here in abundance.
IMG: Amen to that.
Josh Aronson’s Florida Boys is on view at Baker–Hall, Miami through November 22, 2025.
