Coney Island has been a summer retreat for generations of New Yorkers. The destination was at its height in the early 1960s, when scores of young baby boomers trekked off to the beaches with their families to escape the oppressive New York heat.
While the louder elements of Coney Island have been often photographed — Astroland Amusement park, the boardwalk, and sideshows — the more intimate interactions of beachgoers during the period has rarely been seen until now.
Photographer Aaron Rose, a notoriously reclusive artist, spent the early '60s traveling to Coney Island to capture quieter moments at the place once called “the playground of the world.”
The work is now being shown for the first time at the Museum of the City of New York in an exhibition called “In A World Of Their Own: Coney Island Photographs By Aaron Rose.”
“[Coney Island] was filled with people who work in all kinds of professions, who would never normally be out like that,” Rose told Time. “The beach makes them have something in common — and that’s the thing I like most about it.”
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