A collection of photographs, negatives, prints, CD-Rs, and external hard-drives full of images taken by photographer, Lawson Corbett Little (1945-2023). Also included are some copies of Western Beat Entertainment newsletter, for which Little regularly provided photographs.
Photographer Richard Hoit came to Miami in 1914 when he was 27. Already an experienced movie and aerial photographer, his collection of photographs includes landscapes from diverse regions including Massachusetts, Vermont and Florida in the United States. In addition, Hoit traveled extensively in South America in the early nineteen hundreds. The images resulting from these travels are of people and scenery from Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico and Peru. Finally, the Richard Hoit Collection contains Hoit family photographs that span the period 1834 through 1973.
Born Linnea Eleanor Yeager in March 13, 1929, in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, "Bunny" gained international fame as both a model and a photographer. She moved to Miami at a young age and first attracted local interest as a model, winning several pageants and gracing the pages of popular magazines. While she was modeling, she developed a knack for designing and sewing together her own bikinis, and her style became rather prolific in the fashion circuit for many years after.
Since creating portfolios was rather expensive while Bunny was trying to break out into the modeling industry, she was motivated to learn photography and took several night classes to hone her abilities and create her own portfolios. She eventually developed her signature method of photography that allowed her to take pictures of models using natural light through the "fill flash" method. Her style helped to reinvent the genre of nude and pin-up photography, taking it from its roots of overt raunchiness and elevating it into an art form that centered around playful sensuality and provocativeness. Her photos have been featured in Playboy, Redbook, Cosmopolitan, Esquire and many other big-name magazines, and she was also credited in helping to make Bettie Page into a household name as well as other famous pin-up models such as Lisa Winters. Her career also includes several self-penned books, including such titles as How I Photograph Myself, How to take Figure Photos, Photographing the Female Figure, and How I Photograph Nudes.
Bunny Yeager eventually passed away in May 25, 2014 in North Miami, but her legacy as one of the leading pioneers of pin-up photography remains. Her collection captures her eclectic history with an array of scrapbooks, correspondence, ephemera, photographs and clippings, all which illustrate her passion for her work.
The E. G. Barnhill Collection contains negatives of Florida homes and birds, as well as glass plate negatives of Florida scenes. The collection also contains hand-colored postcards by Barnhill depicting Florida scenes (ca. 1910s-1930s), early Florida ephemera, several biographical pages and scrapbooks put together by Barnhill with many resourceful historical clippings from the early half of the 20th century on pirates, Native Americans, archaeological exploits, early technology, and treasure hunting.