Urban Shrines: Religious Offerings in Miami’s Metropolitan Landscape (2015-2020)
In the summer of 1978, a short article appeared in the Miami Herald titled “Neighbors Irate Over Family’s Shrine.” This incident reported on residents in a South Miami neighborhood expressing fear that an outdoor altar built by a Cuban family would devalue their properties.
This event serves as a crucial historical marker, highlighting the intense sociocultural and economic friction arising from immigration and the visual transformation of Miami’s urban landscape. While initially concentrated in Latin neighborhoods like Little Havana, these cultural shifts have expanded throughout Miami-Dade County, turning the region into a complex stew of global cultures.
This photographic series, produced between 2015 and 2020, documents the persistent, visible expressions of faith found in the front yards of families from Cuban and diverse Latin American descent. These permanent installations, known as altars or shrines, often feature Catholic figures syncretized with deities from the Yoruba religion, such as Santa Bárbara (Changó) and San Lázaro (Babalú Ayé).
By placing these sacred symbols in the front yard, the project documents the immigrants’ material claim to American space, deliberately challenging the dominant aesthetic that demands a separation between private faith and the public, secular environment. The altars become fixed, sacred landmarks that negotiate the pressure to assimilate with the necessity of preserving a spiritual heritage.
Beyond simply chronicling how migration influences the visual identity of a city, the project aims to open a deeper dialogue about the persistent entanglement of history, movement, and faith.
Crucially, the series acts as a visual archive of a specific moment in time. The fact that some of these photographed altars no longer exist, due to owners relocating or the structures being removed, underscores the fleeting nature of this unique spiritual geography. The images offer intimate glimpses into the stories of migration and religion, validating the persistent existence of these structures as architectural components and cultural markers of a perpetually evolving urban America.
