According to Waterman, the project "chronicles an innocence hidden in the human spirit, with open arms to an expectant future." This year, after September 11, she decided to forego foreign travel and settled on Miami. "It's been on my short list for a while," she says. Traversing the Magic City from 2:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. by car, foot, Metromover, and taxi, attending both intimate gatherings and immense galas across the city, Waterman (with the aid of this trusty Sherpa) shot roll upon roll of color and black-and-white film. Using flash, ambient light, and a number of exposure and printmaking techniques, she opened her lens to our city and got an eyeful in return.
December 31, 2001, downtown Miami, 2:30 p.m. "I'm here to photograph New Year's Eve," Waterman explains patiently, surrounded by a large contingent of clowns in pre-Orange Bowl Parade limbo. They are Shriners, the ones who raise money for sick kids. Waterman is a clown-magnet with her Nikon camera and obtrusive Vivitar flash apparatus. They offer food from their portable barbecue and stick by her side, like puppy dogs, to get their pictures taken or chat. "Hey, New York!" one calls after her. They heckle one another about their wide angles and ply us with old gags, like the dollar-on-a-string trick. When we move on, they hand Waterman business cards printed with names like Muffles, Lucky, and Dr. Band Aid.
5:00 p.m. The parade begins as scheduled. Rain. Cold. More rain. Whoever came up with the theme of "Underwater Wonderland" should be sunk. Waterman's camera picks out a little girl in a bright slicker, precariously straddling a puddle. The toddler flirts innocently with the camera. The parade is a wash picturewise. Even the mermaids are getting soaked.
7:00 p.m. We are invited to the Shriners' party in the Best Western on Biscayne Boulevard. It's not part of the itinerary, but the rain is ceaseless so Waterman decides to stop in for a look: a group of clowns in various states of disarray, cold cuts and cheese cubes, plenty of booze, and Shriner wives sitting around the perimeter of the small square room. Waterman is introduced to a man in a fez, described only as "the potentate."
7:30 p.m. The most lively place on Calle Ocho seems to be Walgreens, mainly because it's open.
8:00 p.m. at Le Bouchon du Grove. We discover an alley that leads us to the Sandbar Grill. Paydirt. The Pimp and Ho Party is just getting under way. A table of young women, employees of the bar, chat casually, examining one another's outfits -- bustiers and garters, thongs and G-strings. Waterman gets in a few anonymous clicks before they notice and agree to pose. Suddenly the one in skin-tight leopard-print pants climbs, unprovoked, atop the bar for a little Playboy-style bump and grind.
10:00 p.m., Coral Gables. Hors d'oeuvres, a change of clothes, and a few intimate portraits at the luxurious home of Waterman's local contact, who helped secure our access to most of the parties. With two hours still till midnight, Waterman notices her flash battery is running inexplicably, dangerously low.
Vizcaya, 10:30 p.m. Wearing a thrift-store tuxedo jacket and gold-striped shirt, Jill Waterman explores this wonderland of stone and shadows: Champagne is spilling as well-heeled couples kiss in the moonlight. Waterman asks a few of them to pose for her in front of the fireworks, a photographic specialty of hers. She even instructs one couple to put their horns in their mouths and blow into each others' ears. But that's as schmaltzy as it gets. Mainly, she's said, she prefers the "unraveling of a moment, the emotion found on the periphery of a standard pose." One man looks on intently, drawing her into conversation. When he finds out she spent a recent New Year's in Israel he asks, "What was the better party, Jerusalem or Bethlehem?"
"Bethlehem, no question," Waterman responds without hesitation, all the while snapping fireworks. "Really?" he says, visibly disappointed. The moment has come and gone, no champagne, no kiss, just more pictures.
South Beach, 1:30 a.m. In Nikki Beach Club silver-suited male and female models in space-age RoboCop-style costumes part the crowd; people chase Waterman, asking her to take their pictures. Then she spots a young couple from Spain, far removed from the hype, kissing in a hallway by the bathrooms. Enshrouded in darkness, Waterman zeroes in on her subjects, adjusting settings, focusing, finally snapping undetected. "What catches my eye first," she says, "is the potential for composition."
3:00 a.m. An elegant doorman in a top hat unclasps the velvet rope as we enter B.E.D. Waterman's flash repeatedly misfires as she tries to shoot him; he patiently obliges her attempts until finally the flash pops and she gets the shot. "With this project," she says, "there are so many pictures I don't get 'cause the moment is just too quick." Inside the monochromatic club, strings hang from a ceiling filled with white helium balloons. The vibe is mellow: A few people dance, good use is made of the beds, and a model in a giant electronic spider costume with colored lights circulates. "This place is wild," comments Waterman, face scrunched against her buglike camera.
4:00 a.m. We go from B.E.D.'s soft light to Level's intense dark. The immense multilayered club, packed tight with players and wannabes, swallows us. Hip-hop blares. Waterman, guerrilla-style, snakes her way onto the dance floor, wedging herself and her sizable equipment between bodies, catching people grooving. Space-age pink-wigged go-go dancers with laser guns rise on platforms some 30 feet above the crowd and ignite a laser-light show/battle. On the way up to the highest balcony to catch the show, we pass not one but two couples, pressed against a railing, having sex. Waterman tries for a shot. I ask if she wants me to get a release from them. In the end she misses. Maybe it's better I didn't get it, she quips.
4:30 a.m. There is a curve to New Year's, a collective emotional roller coaster: the anticipation, the reveling, and then, notes Waterman, the abyss. We spiral into this abyss in front of the National and the Delano hotels. Their parties are shutting down, and stretch limousines and fashionable drunk people line the streets. An outdated newspaper headline proclaims: "Quiet New Year's predicted."
Midbeach, 5:00 a.m. We arrive for what we hope will be a New Year's breakfast at Jimmy'Z, a small club that somehow manages to be even darker than Level was. Latin music is playing, the party is still raging, and there is not one whiff of frying bacon. "This is crazy," says Waterman. "I can't see a thing. I'm just guessing at the focus." She settles into a strategic corner, steadies her Nikon, and starts snapping: blond "twins" dancing on a platform with a middle-age peroxided DJ; a buxom blonde in a low-cut silver dress, shimmying seductively for the camera; older men cuddling their young, enhanced beauties; a white-haired reveler vomiting lethargically into his napkin.
Waterman calls this "the opposite of paparazzi." "It's like the Pied Piper," she says of her camera's effect on ordinary people. In the best moments, Waterman seems to dissolve into the darkness, disappear from behind her camera, evidenced only by intermittent flashes of light as life swirls on around her. But even such moments have their drawbacks. After an hour shooting at Jimmy'Z, she says matter-of-factly: "I don't know if any of those are going to come out."
Home, 6:15 a.m. "Man, people really like to flaunt it here," observes Waterman. I ask if she thinks she got some good shots for her project. She hesitates and then says it takes her awhile before she's able to like the images, adding, "When I develop them, I'm always disappointed compared with the experience."
