The poignant glamour of the elderly in “god's waiting room” Miami

In the late 90s, Canadian photographer Naomi Harris stumbled across the Haddon Hall Hotel in South Beach during her trip to Miami, Florida. A haven for the elderly and the retired, residents were able to live in the hotel year round, and Naomi became fascinated with the people and the community they’d built around themselves. The hotel was one of the last in a dying breed of establishments that housed the ageing population in the South Beach area. Taken over two and a half years, these photographs capture a quiet landmark in the landscape and mark a time before the whole area seemed to be constantly in development. 

“I was initially researching for another project about holocaust survivors when I came across the Haddon Hall Hotel,” Naomi explains. “I’d been spending a lot of time at a senior centre where people would come to get meals, play bingo and socialise. I often dropped some of the ladies home and it turned out a lot of them were staying at Haddon Hall.”

A year later Naomi came back to Miami, her sole focus set on photographing the hotel and its residents, so for the beginning of the project she checked in and stayed there for two months. “Living and being there everyday meant I could get to know them better and play my part in their community by taking them to the doctors or getting their groceries for them,” she explains. 

Shooting her subjects relaxing in the sun, chatting with friends and getting their hair done by eachother, the photographer captures the camaraderie between the residents. The highly saturated colours mimic the sunny splendour associated with Miami. “The film I was using already produced these really punchy colours, so when I combined that with the flash as well it added even more of a vibrant contrast, which I love,” Naomi explains. 

On first glance a garish glamour frames the series, but Naomi points out the hardship the residents were living in despite the blue skies and swimming pools. “The people living there were surviving from one social security check to the next. The rooms were very minimal and a lot of them were pretty poor, having not really prepared to live much beyond their 60s or 70s.”

Longevity was a topic discussed a lot between the residents: “Miami’s often been called ‘god’s waiting room’, and a lot of the people living there had so much time to think they were almost waiting to move on,” the photographer explains. “There was one woman called Sylvia who was giving away her belongings in preparation and she gave me a water colour painting of her beloved cat Shimby. On her bed she slept with an envelope that had a set of pre-paid cremation papers in it, ready for when she ‘woke up a lucky stiff.’”