Stephen Salmieri: First Photos of Coney Island, 1967 – 1972

“I used to be a fireball of energy – if I had two or three days a week to spare where I wasn’t on an assignment I was out with my camera in the city. I covered this city like an archeologist.”

– Stephen Salmieri, Coney Island Trips, 1967 – 1972

 

 

Between 1967 and 1972, New Yorker Stephen Salmieri captured life on Coney Island. “It was my first self-assigned project at 20 years of age, having just graduated from the School of Visual Arts,” he says.

“In choosing my subject I gravitated naturally to the familiar destination of my adolescent bike adventures. I made the hour ride to Coney Island with all my cameras in tow all year round. I carried a 4×5 field camera, a 6x6cm and a 35mm format, and lots of Tri-X film…

“In 1969, CAMERA magazine approached me at my first exhibition at the Underground Gallery. In my naivety, I did not realize that Coney Island was also the choice territory for such luminaries as Robert Frank, Lisette Model, Leon Levinstein and Weegee. It wasn’t until the magazine published these photographs as part of their seminal Coney Island issue in 1971 that I realized I had become part of a vaunted tradition.”

 

“It is like alchemy, making the negative. I think what is getting lost in the digital age when you see your pictures instantly is the process of seeing your negative in your head when you are shooting.”

– Stephen Salmieri 

 

“These spare and emotional first images of a forgotten community, now lost in time, allowed me to forge a vision at a pivotal moment in my young life.”

– Stephen Salmieri

 

Via an exhibition at the Joseph Bellows Gallery.