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Rob Boyte Collection, bulk date unknown

 

Summary

Creator:
Boyte, Robert Alan
Extent:
6.00 boxes
Language:
English

Background

Scope and content:

The Rob Boyte Collection contains photographs and photographic negatives created by photographer Rob Boyte during his time in Miami, Florida. The materials document individuals, neighborhoods, daily life, and the social and cultural landscape of Miami, including residential areas, streets, vehicles, and local animal life. The photographs also document events and social issues in Miami during the 1980s and later, including race relations and the local impact of international events such as the Iraq War. The collection also contains movie reviews reflecting Boyte's interest in film and cinema. In addition, the collection includes photographs and drawings depicting nudity and nude imagery. The materials provide visual and documentary evidence of people, places, everyday life, social and historical events, and cultural interests in Miami and their broader context.

Biographical / historical:

Rob Boyte (Robert Alan Boyte) was born in Richmond California in 1944.  His early childhood was in North St. Louis until 1955, when his family moved to the suburb of St. Ann, Missouri, where he lived until graduating high school and joining the U.S. Air Force in 1963.  His interests as an adolescent in high school were Art, Biology and Writing.  Rob also first started taking photographs with a Kodak Box camera and later a Brownie camera as a teenager, learning the rudimentary of "keep the sun to your back."

During childhood Rob also spent summers with his father's parents in rural Mississippi outside of Brookhaven, where he observed racial segregation and the "white" and "colored" facilities, not present in St. Louis.

Rob was trained in the U.S.A.F. Security Service in Texas and stationed in Karamursel Air Station in Turkey.  His last duty station was at Fort Meade Maryland, where he worked in the National Security Agency.  After his four-year commitment of active duty ended in 1967, he left the Air Force as an Airman First Class and went to Mississippi, where an uncle got him a job on an oil rig.  That job lasted one month and Rob went to New Orleans, where he would live until 1982 (with intermittent stays in Miami and Pittsburgh).

Rob was never goal oriented and never selected a career other than gravitating to human services work.  In New Orleans he worked as a Security Guard, Police Patrolman, French Market Cleaning Crew, Museum Attendant, Free Clinic Attendant, Psychiatric Hospital Aide, Group Home Resident Manager and Respite Care Aide.

While in New Orleans he became a life-partner with Jim Hewitt and the two traveled thru Centro America in 1974 and overland from Europe to India in 1975.  While in India on a second trip in 1977, Rob, when not assisting at a free rural clinic, satisfied his interest in plants by drawing 62 "Weeds of India," 17 of which he has seen growing in South Florida.

Rob and Jim both worked for Montanari Clinical School in Hialeah Florida as "Cottage Parents" to disturbed boys and at DePaul Psychiatric Hospital in New Orleans as Psychiatric Aides.   Rob and Jim separated in New Orleans in 1978 and Rob met Brenda Williams in 1980 while both were working at Hope Haven/Madonna Manor home for boys.  They moved to Miami in 1982, where they got married at Unity On The Bay in 1983.  Rob worked as a ceramics instructor at a sheltered workshop for developmentally disabled adults and Brenda worked at The Miami Bridge for runaways.

During the 1980s and '90s Rob was a prolific writer of letters to the editor of the Miami News, The Miami Herald, The Gainesville Sun and The Weekly News, as well as other publications, 200 of which made print.  He also wrote a column for Naturist publications called Nude Attitude, which he later compiled into a small, self-published book of the same title.

Rob took a break from human service work in 1984 for about two years, working at an air condition supply company as a Warehouseman and Delivery Truck Driver.  Also in 1984, Rob got his first 35mm, single lens reflex camera and started his photography avocation, taking photos of everything he saw from buildings, plants, animals, people and events in South Florida to his travels to New Orleans and St. Louis.

From 1986 to 1992, Rob worked at Faye Clark's New Horizons in Hialeah as a Group Home Resident Manager.  During this time he also worked part-time as a model for art classes in all the schools in the Miami area, taking his camera with him.  In 1986, Rob got involved with Health Crisis Network in Miami, and worked for various other AIDS support agencies in Miami and North Central Florida until 1996, as well as being a workplace HIV-AIDS Educator starting in 1999. 

While living and working at the group home, Brenda took classes at Miami Dade Community College medical campus and became a Registered Nurse in 1990.  Rob also went to Lindsey Hopkins Technical Education School and became a Nursing Assistant in 1991.  Rob and Brenda moved to Gainesville in 1992, where Rob worked at nursing homes as a CNA and as a Home Health Aide, before getting a job at Shands Hospital.  Brenda worked at Alachua General Hospital.

Rob and Brenda returned to Miami in 1996, where Rob Returned to his original job as a workshop supervisor with developmentally disabled adults.  Rob and Brenda got divorced in 1998.

In November 1999, Rob took an office job at MACtown, a residential facility for developmentally disabled adults and stayed until retiring in 2015.

Note written by Robert Alan Boyte

Acquisition information:

Donation

Donated by Rob Boyte

Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Access and use

Restrictions:

Restrictions apply. This collection contains photographs and drawings that include nudity imagery. Researchers should be aware that some materials may contain graphic or sensitive visual content. Photographs and names of the subjects on the photographs may not be published unless their permission has been obtained, or they are deceased.

Terms of access:

Rights: In copyright. Standardized rights statement: https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/

Special Collections & University Archives provides copies of materials in our collections for private study, scholarship, or research. Patrons are responsible for determining the proper copyright holder and securing permission to publish, quote, broadcast, exhibit, or perform that work. FIU Special Collections will provide all available information about the copyright holder of materials found in our collections.

For more information please visit: https://library.fiu.edu/find/copyright/general

Location of this collection:
Florida International University
11200 SW 8th Street
Miami
FL
33199
USA