About the Don Hickey Archive
Spanning roughly two thousand Kodachrome slides made between 1975 and 1985, and rediscovered in 2025, the Don Hickey Archive presents a vivid record of people and public life across Miami, Toronto, and rural Canada, with additional scenes from Orlando’s early Disney World and the American West. About three hundred photographs form the heart of the collection: images of men and women at the beach, skaters on boardwalks, families in motion, and strangers suspended in unguarded moments of self-presentation. These are the pictures where character, performance, and observation intersect most strongly.
Don Hickey (1934 - 2015) was a self-taught and committed amateur who took photography seriously as president of his local camera club and as a regular teacher of hobby photography. His work moves easily between public and private spaces, and he photographed tourists, strangers, and family members with the same instinctive curiosity. In Miami the images often explore masculinity and display, including men posing, flexing, relaxing, or simply enduring the Florida heat in clothing that now appears almost theatrical. In Toronto and rural Canada the mood shifts toward street life, work, weather, and quieter acts of everyday performance. Together these images create a cross-regional portrait of late twentieth century North American life.
Barbara, Hickey’s wife, appears throughout the archive as both subject and collaborator. Their travel patterns between Canada and Florida and between cities and rural landscapes shaped the rhythm and geography of the collection. Her presence anchors the more intimate emotional register, even as Hickey’s camera often turns outward to strangers in the sun.
The portion of the archive shown here is a curated selection. Only a small fraction of the existing slides has been digitized, and archival work is ongoing. The goal is not completeness but clarity, and the intent is to present the images that speak most directly to the emotional, historical, and cultural textures of the period. The photographs retain their original color, grain, and character. Restoration is minimal and focuses only on preserving the integrity of the slide.
The archive emphasizes visual pleasure and the distinctive tonal world of Kodachrome, but it also engages with broader questions of identity and performance. What does it mean to pose for a stranger? How does a person dress for the beach or the city street? How does one choose to participate in or resist the spectacle of public life? Hickey’s photographs do not provide a single answer. Instead they invite reflection on these themes in subtle and surprising ways.
A book drawn from the archive is currently in development. The working title is Don Hickey’s Macho Men, and it examines masculinity, display, and the complicated relationship between observer and observed in the late 1970s and early to mid-1980s. It brings together a focused selection of Hickey’s most striking images of men and youth, whether posed, unposed, confident, theatrical, or simply enduring the gaze of a photographer who noticed something worth remembering.
The archive remains a living and evolving record. As new slides are digitized and catalogued, the selection will expand and reveal more of the interconnected worlds Hickey photographed during a decade of color, character, and everyday performance.
