By Diego Waisman, author of Sunset Colonies: A Visual Elegy to South Florida’s Mobile Home Communities
“People think that geography is about capitals, landforms, and so on. But it is also about place—its emotional tone, social meaning, and generative potential.”
Yi-Fu Tuan, Chinese-American geographer and writer (1930-2022)
The motivation behind creating Sunset Colonies stemmed from a deep sense of curiosity and frustration. Back in 2016, I stumbled upon the news of the mass eviction of the Dixie Mobile Court mobile home community after its sale to developers. The site was located across the railroad tracks, beyond the boundaries of the city of Aventura, Florida. The first time I visited the community I felt out of place. I remember being very shy, walking silently through its streets. Not knowing yet why I was doing what I was doing, I used a cheap video camera to document the experience. The community was small, yet large enough to accommodate about 40 families.
Back then, I had no clear idea of what to do with the footage, nor did I understand how I connected to this reality. I felt that documenting this space was important, historic. Was I the only one that heard the news of the sale? Had this kind of real estate transaction become so normalized that nobody else seemed to care about the future of the Dixie Mobile Court residents? I realized then that I was witnessing a vanishing reality.
Dixie Mobile Court became the starting point of this seven year journey that concluded with the publication of Sunset Colonies. Along the way, I met veterans, retirees, families, and young adults that either owned or rented a mobile home in the many parks I photographed across South Florida. I remember talking to Carlos, a Sunset Colony resident who had been living in this Broward County mobile community for over 30 years. After I took his portrait, I asked him about his immediate plans. He wasn’t sure where to go, but he knew that the condos replacing the mobile homes would not be for him.
Having taken thousands of photographs of multiple communities that experienced the same fate as Dixie Mobile Court and Sunset Colony, I can draw connections between the photographs and parts of my own story. As an immigrant born into a first-generation family, I understood dispersion through its physical manifestation. My grandparents’ immigration was the result of antisemitism and hunger. My upbringing was shaped by their postmemory: the generational trauma of displacement and expulsion.
I hope that Sunset Colonies serves as a record for these disappearing communities amidst South Florida’s furious urban redevelopment—a vehicle to honor the lives of the people that lived in these mobile homes and to guard the fragility of memory and place.
Gabriel, Mary. “Belonging to This Place: A Conversation with Yi-Fu Tuan.” University of Wisconsin-Madison, College of Letters & Science. May 2, 2013. Accessed June 12, 2021. link.
Stewart-Muniz, Sean. “CK Prive Buys Trailer Park across from Aventura Mall for $8.5m.” The Real Deal, July 11, 2016. https://therealdeal.com/miami/2016/07/11/ck-prive-buys-trailer-park-across-from-aventura-mall-for-8-5m/.
Diego Alejandro Waisman is a Buenos Aires–born, Miami-based visual artist whose work explores social and economic displacement, exile, family, identity, and origins. He has exhibited and received accolades for his work in South Florida and around the world.
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