Interview with Victor Deupi, author of “Rada Photography: Mid-Century Architecture and Culture in South Florida and the Caribbean”

Victor Deupi is a professor of practice in the School of Architecture at the University of Miami. He is the author of several books and we interviewed him about his new book, Rada Photography: Mid-Century Architecture and Culture in South Florida and the Caribbean (University Press of Florida, 2026). You can pre-order the book now or get it in January.

How would you explain the subject of this book to someone who had never heard of it?

The architectural photography of Annette and Rudi Rada (Rada Photography) documented the cities, buildings, landscapes, and people of South Florida and the Caribbean from approximately 1946-1975, at a time when publications such as The Miami Herald, House and Garden, The American Home, and others were promoting travel to a region that was still largely perceived as an untouched paradise. Both self-taught, their work for nearly thirty years explored the local cultures of the Caribbean in extraordinary detail, capturing the new awareness of mass tourism while bringing to light the changing identities of several Caribbean nations and their people. Whether in South Florida, Cuba, or the southwest Gulf of Mexico, their photography captured postwar progress in the built environment to the detriment of indigenous and impoverished cultures who were entirely unprepared for the onslaught of modernity. The book presents the two faces of modernity, the glamorous and the toxic!

Who were Annette and Rudi Rada? And how did you become interested in them?

Annette and Rudi Rada both came from immigrant Jewish families from Eastern Europe that emigrated to the US in the late nineteenth century to seek better employment opportunities and quality of life. The two were born in the first decade of the twentieth century and were raised during the height of the Jazz Age and the subsequent Great Recession that followed the stock market collapse of 1929.  Like many second-generation American Jews of the time, they inherited their families’ “Old World” values in work ethic and culture, while seeking to assimilate into the new multi-ethnic world that characterized the US in the early half of the twentieth century.  Their story is a deeply American story that bridged the economic and social challenges of the US in the pre-war era, and the great success that the nation became after the war, even if that success was not available to everyone.

The story of Rada Photography begins with the cultural and artistic formation of Annette B. Solomon and Rudolf “Rudi” Reisman prior to World War II. Annette was raised in New York City into a family of clothing manufacturers, and textiles and weaving became an early interest and inspiration for her. Rudi Rada was raised in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he trained in music as a violinist.  He then moved to New York City in the late 1930s to work at a photographic equipment and supplies company and as a staff member of the NBC Symphony Orchestra. He opened his first workshop, Woodmere Studio, on Long Island, focusing on photographing children and pets.

 Annette and Rudi met around 1940 and married the following year. Shortly thereafter Rudi left to fight in World War II, having enlisted in the US Army. He continued to photograph during the war, and after a brief period working in New York, the two relocated to Miami to start their own company Rada Photography. Taking advantage of the booming tourist-oriented economy and the prospects that the new modern architecture of the region offered to photography, the Radas saw an opportunity, with magazines and advertising providing the perfect outlet for their photography.

How do you define “Miami modernism” and/or “Tropical Modern?”

The ideal visions of the early-twentieth-century modern movement radically changed after World War II. The break with such utopian and universal visions brought to a degree an awareness of local and vernacular building traditions and the need for modernity to respect and respond to these local patterns of building. In that sense, “Tropical Modernism” is an architectural approach that marries the clean lines and functional principles of European modernism with the climate-conscious and cultural sensibilities of tropical regions, like Miami. Understanding these disparities, the Radas set to work with local architects, builders, and patrons, capturing the new “Florida Living” that was transforming the residential architecture of the region. The Radas became deeply embedded in the daily life of South Florida’s booming economy in the 1950s, capturing in granular detail the “living” city of those who inhabited the day-to-day world of civic, commercial, and institutional architecture, as well as the associated landscapes and public spaces that accompanied these extraordinary buildings. These types of buildings included offices, theaters, auditoriums, libraries, churches, and university structures, all of which featured prominently in the Rada portfolio, and these were not just contemporary structures but historic ones as well.

 The new hotels on Miami Beach, historic structures such as the Villa Vizcaya and Gardens, and new resorts throughout the state, provided the Radas with ample material for exploring the tourist economy of South Florida. The paradox of all this tourism of course was that the natural environment that drew people to the region in the first place, was transformed into a commercially conceived vision of an ideal landscape, a utopian paradise with a comprehensive faith in technology and construction that devoured the very pristine setting that drew people to the region in the first place. While Rudi photographed buildings and architectural environments, Annette, on the other hand, adopted a more ethnographic approach, photographing people, landscapes, and cultures, with their customs, habits, and mutual differences, with the aim of simply observing and feeling their predicaments.

Your book is about architecture and culture in South Florida and the Caribbean, what do you think we miss when we think about South Florida without putting it into the context of the Caribbean?

Annette and Rudi did not limit their photography to South Florida in the 1950s, in fact, they traveled several times to Cuba, the Bahamas, and at least once to Puerto Rico, where they continued to focus on architecture, cities, landscapes, people, and the impact that American and increasingly global tourism had - for better or worse - on these tropical islands. While Rudi was documenting the modern architecture of Havana and San Juan, Annette was exploring the shantytowns on the edges of these cosmopolitan cities. Their photography challenged the conventional understanding of the relationship between Miami and the Hispanic and British Caribbean, exposing how the regions became playgrounds for wealthy travelers who were largely unconcerned with urban and rural corruption and poverty, the increasing influence of North American taste, and the painful reality of revolutionary instability. 

I think almost everyone agrees that Florida has some very distinct regions. You reference “South Florida”—where is that exactly? What are its boundaries? And how is it different from other parts of Florida?

Miami sits on a thin strip of land bordered on the east by the Biscayne Bay and Atlantic Ocean, and on the west by the Florida Everglades. It is a beautiful flat land surrounded by water, whose topography exists only in the city’s skyline and magnificent cloud formations. As one moves further north, the terrain starts to roll, the flora starts to change, and a distinctly southern drawl can be heard. Indeed, one has to go north to be in the deep South!

How did you get interested in architecture photography?

As an architectural historian, I typically use photography to portray buildings, cities, monuments, architects, and other related built environment topics, but I rarely ever gave much attention the people behind the lens and their agency in providing viewers with a distinct point of view. I had always admired the architectural photography of Julius Shulman in Southern California, and Ezra Stoller in New York, so when I came across the vast collection of images by the Radas, I knew it was time to bring them to light, and to consider their contribution to the development of mid-century Miami architecture and culture.

Your book includes many photographs that have not been previously published. How did you go about doing the research for this book?

Fortunately, the HistoryMiami Museum has the bulk of the Rada’s collection with some other Miami institutions and a handful of private collections having the rest, so it was easy to research. Their work also featured in many newspapers and magazines, like The Miami Herald, the New York Times, Architectural Record, House & Garden, etc. so I found a great deal of material there.  Throughout the 1950s the Radas’ photographs were featured in the Sunday Home section of The Miami Herald, so linking the Radas with the many architects and designers they worked with was very easy.

What effect do you hope this book will have?

To date, there has never been a comprehensive or scholarly study of Rada Photography. Therefore, the book will appeal to historians of architectural photography in general and to students and scholars of photography, architecture, and culture in particular. As the study of regional and indigenous traditions are increasingly important within universities, it is possible that the book could serve as an important vector of elective history courses on the topic. Since the book accompanied a major retrospective exhibition of the Radas at the HistoryMiami Museum (https://historymiami.org/exhibition/annette-and-rudi-rada/), the book should appeal to many scholars and general readers within South Florida and elsewhere.

Was this book something you had been wanting to do for a while, or was there something “this book, right now” about it?

The late Cuban architect, Raúl Álvarez, introduced me to the fascinating figure of Rudi Rada in 2016 while I was writing my book on Cuban Modernism (Birkhäuser, 2021), showing me a series of portraits that Rada had taken of him in his experimental garden just outside of Havana. My co-author, Jean-François Lejeune, and I discovered further collections of Rada’s work at the HistoryMiami Museum, especially of the Cuban projects of the Miami architect, Igor B. Polevitzky, who designed the Havana Riviera Hotel, and the unbuilt Biltmore Club, as well as Antonio Quintana’s entrance pavilion to the Zoological Park. I was struck by Rada’s images and how well he grasped and conveyed the tropical modernism of Cuban architecture. As I searched more into Rada’s life and work, I discovered that his wife, Annette, was a co-owner of Rada Photography and a fascinating figure in her own right.  No sooner had I finished Cuban Modernism than I began looking further into the Radas’ life and work, only to discover that their vast photography collection was kept in Miami at the HistoryMiami Museum, with additional smaller collections at the Vizcaya Museum & Garden and a handful of public and private collections.  Thus began my serendipitous inquiry into the life and work of Rada Photography. 

What are some distinctives of Miami architecture in the present day?

Miami is a true palimpsest of Caribbean architecture, with traces of indigenous settlements throughout. The early building boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries gave the region wooden vernacular buildings, followed by the fashionable Mediterranean Revival architecture, and extraordinary Art Deco. The postwar era brought Tropical Modernism, and the 1980s gave us “Miami Vice” Postmodern buildings. Today, Miami is an architectural and urban laboratory where anything goes, including the reckless demolition of historic structures. It is both fascinating and tragic.

What is your own Florida story?

I am a Cuban American from the north, raised in Washington, DC, after my parents emigrated from Cuba in 1961. I have been visiting Miami since the late 1960s. I studied architecture in the northeast and taught at various universities around the country before settling in Miami. I have now been living here with my wife, Jill, 3 children, and pets, for the last 11 years. Before that we lived in CT and several other places in the US, England, and Italy. Jill is the one who brought us here having been appointed Director and Chief Curator at the University of Miami’s Lowe Art Museum. I was given a spousal accommodation in the University’s School of Architecture and have found the environment extremely fruitful for research and teaching. I never want to shovel snow again, and love walking the dog each morning in shorts and flip flops.

What do you think the rest of the country is missing when they think about Florida? What are they missing in the gap between reputation and reality?

Most people come to Florida to vacation, or to visit the art fairs in Miami and Palm Beach. The truth is that the day-to-day living here is far more interesting than the fatigue that comes with the image of South Florida as the capital of “Vacationland.” There is a strong intellectual and artistic community in Miami with many museums, universities, cultural institutions, historic monuments, and extraordinary landscapes, like the Everglades. The diversity of cultures makes it equally fascinating.

Do you have a favorite local restaurant? Or a place you take friends and family when they visit?

My wife and I go out far more often than I would like - largely because of her role as a Museum Director - so we go to many restaurants and events. I can’t really say we go to any on a regular basis as we are always trying out new venues. It can be exhausting.  Therefore, when friends and family visit, we eat at home, and grill endlessly by the pool in our backyard … usually in shorts and flip flops.  

What Miami building in the present do you think should be most photographed? Which building is most deserving?

I think the buildings that deserve the most attention are the unprotected historic ones that will be torn down to accommodate more resort activity or high-end residences for foreigners to park their money. Sadly, most of the Miami mid-century buildings the Radas photographed no longer exist, so you can see my point, and further understand why the book was so important to me. Thank you … this was fun!