"I don't do riots, it in my contract," Charles Hashim wryly explains about the only subject missing from his late 1970s and early 1980s Miami street photography.

Urban insurrections aside, virtually every other aspect of Miami's chaotic lurch from sleepy Southern town to multicultural metropolis was grist for Hashim's camera lens. And he rarely shied away from getting as close to the action as possible. What emerges from Hashim previously unseen photographs all lovingly transferred from his original 35mm negatives is an intimate portrait of a city coming apart at the seams, with the old social order crumbling and everything up for grabs. Pioneering gay rights activists, outlaw bikers, and libertine punk rockers duke it out for room to breathe with the Ku Klux Klan and religious revivalists. A new Miami was being born, and here's the proof of its growing pains in all their over the top splendor.

"I've never gone out with a picture already in my head - the real world of Miami is stranger than anything I could think of," Hashim adds. Letter16 Press.