Daniel Azoulay looks up

by Jake Cline

The sky is not the first thing a viewer notices when encountering the photographs in Daniel Azoulay's new exhibition, but it may be the most striking. Bright blue and streaked with clouds, the downtown Miami sky in these images hardly appears empty. It is, however, uncrowded, a description that no longer fits the expanse beyond the Adrienne Arsht Center, whose construction Azoulay documents in This Isn't Just a Building. It's a Work of Art, which includes 35 photographs taken from 2003 to 2006.

On view in the Ziff Ballet Opera House and Knight Concert Hall, the exhibition chronicles the raising of those structures across two city blocks along Biscayne Boulevard. The earliest images offer X-ray-like views of the buildings' skeletons, their bones of curved steel indicating the sloping, multilayered edifices to come. Later photographs capture the Arsht—then known as the Miami Performing Arts Center—near completion and on the eve of its October 2006 opening to the public. All the shots present a neighborhood where shadows are more likely to be cast by trees than skyscrapers. To be sure, construction cranes dot the skyline—Miami has and always will desire elevation—but the machines appear singly or in pairs and not yet in flocks.

Explicit markers of the past appear everywhere in these photos. A street sign points to the Miami Arena, the original home of the Miami Heat and Florida Panthers and demolished in 2008. A pole banner advertises the "Fed Ex Orange Bowl" at "Pro Player Stadium." Another banner promotes the "Miami Tropical Marathon" sponsored by Great Florida Bank, gone since 2014. Long stretches of Biscayne Boulevard and Northeast Second Avenue appear free of cars and safe enough for a quick game of hopscotch.

To Azoulay, these photos evoke more pride than nostalgia. A fashion photographer turned architecture buff, Azoulay says This Isn't Just a Building. It's a Work of Art tells a distinct story about a site he considers "an icon" and relates a larger narrative about Miami's ever-changing skyline.

"My specialty is documentary," Azoulay says. "For me, when I see a project, I look at it as telling a story. Even [when photographing] a ballet or an opera or a jazz [concert], I tell the story from the beginning to the end. It's got to be a story."

Azoulay made sure to be present for every phase of the performing arts center's construction. "I was there step by step," says Azoulay, a Fisher Island resident who has also photographed the construction of the Perez Art Museum Miami, the PortMiami Tunnel, Brickell City Center, the Frost Museum of Science, the One Thousand Museum condominium and more than 100 other buildings in Greater Miami. "That's my thing. That's really my niche."

Azoulay says he shot the This Isn't Just a Building photos with a square-format Hasselblad camera. "All film, nothing digital," he emphasizes. "Everything was film." He says he received no compensation for his work—"with any nonprofit, I've always donated my time"—and has given the exhibition's prints to the Arsht. 

Azoulay recently turned 80 years old. He was born in Casablanca, Morocco, and at the age of 6 moved with his family to France. In the 1950s, they emigrated to Israel, where Azoulay remained until the late '60s, when he returned to France before moving to Copenhagen, Denmark. "That's where I spent four years studying photography," he recalls. "I had the best tutors."

After a Danish model Azoulay had photographed brought her portfolio to Paris, fashion and advertising companies sought him out. Work for the Ford and Wilhelmina modeling agencies followed. Later, his work appeared in Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and other major magazines, and his corporate clients included Federated Department Stores, Lillie Rubin and Mayors Jewelers.

Azoulay moved to South Florida from New York in 1980. Ten years later, after running a studio in Fort Lauderdale, he opened what he says was the only gallery dedicated to photography in the Design District. He moved the gallery to Midtown Miami in 2001.

At the encouragement of Miami real-estate developer Jorge M. Pérez, Azoulay says he decided to leave the fashion industry and move full-time into architectural photography. "He could see things, and he believed in me," Azoulay says. "I said, 'Look, I don't do this stuff.' He said, 'You could do anything.' 

"And then, of course, with the Arsht, when I saw the construction in 2003, I was stunned [by] how pieces of metal are put together and become a structure."

Azoulay continues to bring his camera to the Arsht. He has photographed most, if not all, concerts in the Jazz Roots series and routinely shoots performances by Arsht resident companies Miami City Ballet and Florida Grand Opera. He recently announced that he will donate 600,000 photographs, shot on film and digital cameras, to the Arsht. "That's my trail at the end—4,000 rolls of film," he jokes.

From his apartment on Fisher Island, Azoulay says he looks across Biscayne Bay to downtown Miami and sees decades of transformation and progress—in the city but also in his work. "I like to see the skyline," he says. "I look at it and go, 'OK, I am maybe responsible for [shooting] 30 percent of those buildings.' I look at it as magnificent from end to end, because I am looking at it as more of a panoramic photograph. I'm not looking at it as individual photographs.

"The architecture has changed," he continues. "Now, it's all about angles. No more square cookie cutters. Now, a building has to be twisted. It has to be bent, and it has to be skinny and fat. Nothing looks flat anymore. Everything has a shape, which is beautiful."

This Isn't Just a Building. It's a Work of Art, part of the 1300 Projects visual arts series, will be on view until early April at the Adrienne Arsht Center. Guests attending performances during that time can view the exhibition, and the public can see the photographs during free tours of the Arsht January 17, February 21 and March 21.