The National Gallery of Art has added Miami, a portfolio of 18 gelatin silver prints by photographer and printer Gus Kayafas, to its permanent collection as a gift of Pete Kayafas (accession 2025.99.1.1-18). The photographs stem from an eight-day trip Kayafas made to Miami in 1976, during which, as he has recalled, he set out "determined to photograph a place peopled with palm trees" while chairing the founding photography department at MassArt.
Per the source notes and Palm Press's own description, the portfolio was printed in an edition of 25 copies plus 8 artist's proofs on Kodak Polyfiber paper, archivally processed and mounted onto embossed Rives BFK paper, with text pages set in Bodoni type and printed letterpress by Darrell Hyder. It was published in 1984, several years after the images were made.
Kayafas is best known as the founder of Palm Press, Inc., which he incorporated in 1980 after leaving MassArt and which has since produced more than 60 photographic portfolios for artists including Harold Edgerton, Harry Callahan, and Aaron Siskind. Miami is considered the project that led directly to Palm Press's creation — Kayafas has said he modeled the venture on his friend Lee Friedlander's Haywire Press. Copies of the same 1984 portfolio are also held by the Yale University Art Gallery and the RISD Museum. The portfolio can be also viewed here: https://palmpress.studio/portfolios/gus-kayafas-miami-1-xn9ht