While on a short visit to Miami in 1969 Nancy Holt took the photo series Miami Puddles, a visual poem created through serial images shot on a walking journey through Miami. As in other photographic series from this time period, Holt uses a self-determined system of seeing to guide her image making, in this case mapping the city of Miami solely through photographing puddles that have formed after a rainstorm. Miami Puddles foreshadows Holt’s later sculptures that use reflecting pools of water—such as Hydra’s Head (1974) and Up and Under (1987-98)—and her consideration for the aesthetics and technology of water drainage in the System Works of the 1980s and ’90s.
