September 2025
Stephen Salmieri (American, b. 1945)
Coney Island
1968
Vintage gelatin silver print
I love these photographs!
What’s not to like… generously sympathetic photographs that exhibit no pretension, containing interesting backgrounds and wonderful characters. The incongruity of a muscle man in leopard skin bathers in a snowy landscape at Coney Island … no worries!
“In the images, storefront booths, midway games, carnival architecture, and the shoreline provide the backdrop to Salmieri’s descriptive and engaging portraits.”
I particularly like the wonderful photograph of the large gentleman with tattoos in a white singlet sitting at a table surrounded by a halo of light bulbs. I also like how Salmieri gives some of his portraits context by including background information in his photographs.
The artist joins a rite of passage for many American photographers in taking photographs at Coney Island – that is, to capture the magic and mystique of this theatrical, carnivalesque place – one full of history, ceremony, community, tradition, fun, drama, people, sun and sand.1
Luminaries to have photographed there include Diane Arbus, Robert Frank, Weegee, Garry Winogrand, Bruce Davidson, Lisette Model, Walker Evans, Leon Levinstein, Arlene Gottfried, Harold Feinstein and Edward J. Kelty to name just a few.
Stephen Salmieri’s charismatic photographs are strong enough to join this pantheon of stars and the “vaunted tradition” of picturing Coney Island.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
1/ Bakhtin’s idea of the carnivalesque and the carnival paradigm accords to certain patterns of play where “the social hierarchies of everyday life… are profaned and overturned by normally suppressed voices and energies.”
“The carnival offers the chance to have a new outlook on the world, to realise the relative nature of all that exists, and to enter a completely new order of things.”
Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and his World (trans. Hélène Iswolsky). Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984, p. 34.
Many thankx to the Joseph Bellows Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
For more information on the history and photography of Coney Island please see the exhibition posting Coney Island: Visions of an American Dreamland, 1861-2008 and Forever Coney: Photographs from the Brooklyn Museum Collection at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, November 2015 – March 2016
“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
Stephen Salmieri (American, b. 1945)
Coney Island
1968
Vintage gelatin silver print
Stephen Salmieri (American, b. 1945)
Coney Island
1971
Vintage gelatin silver print
Stephen Salmieri (American, b. 1945)
Coney Island
1968
Vintage gelatin silver print
Stephen Salmieri (American, b. 1945)
Coney Island
1969
Vintage gelatin silver print
Stephen Salmieri (American, b. 1945)
Coney Island
1969
Vintage gelatin silver print
Stephen Salmieri (American, b. 1945)
Coney Island
1969
Vintage gelatin silver print
Stephen Salmieri (American, b. 1945)
Coney Island
1969
Vintage gelatin silver print
Stephen Salmieri (American, b. 1945)
Coney Island
1969
Vintage gelatin silver print
Stephen Salmieri (American, b. 1945)
Coney Island
1969
Vintage gelatin silver print
Stephen Salmieri (American, b. 1945)
Coney Island
1969
Vintage gelatin silver print
Joseph Bellows Gallery is pleased to present an online exhibition of Stephen Salmieri’s photographs of Coney Island. Made between 1967 and 1972 with an array of cameras and black and white film, these images portray a cast of beachgoers and amusement park locals within the surrounding environment of one of America’s earliest and most illustrious seashore amusement parks.
The exhibition showcases Salmieri’s finely crafted vintage black and white prints. In the images, storefront booths, midway games, carnival architecture, and the shoreline provide the backdrop to Salmieri’s descriptive and engaging portraits. In a published statement on the photographs, the artist explains his process and motivation:
“The world of Coney Island has changed dramatically since I made these photographs. It was my first self-assigned project at twenty years of age, having just graduated from the School of Visual Arts. 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 x 5 field camera, a 6 x 6 cm and a 35 mm 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 realise 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 realised I had become part of a vaunted tradition.
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.”
Salmieri’s photographs from this body of work were also featured in the exhibition Forever Coney: Photographs from the Brooklyn Museum Collection.
Salmieri’s work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Brooklyn Museum, New York, Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C., Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, New York, Flint Institute, Michigan, the Museum of the City of New York, the Nelson-Atkins Museum, and the J. Paul Getty Museum. Publications include “American Grilles” (1978, Hartcourt-Brace) and “Cadillac: An American Icon” (1985, Rizzoli).
Text from the Joseph Bellows Gallery website
Stephen Salmieri (American, b. 1945)
Coney Island
1970
Vintage gelatin silver print
Stephen Salmieri (American, b. 1945)
Coney Island
1971
Vintage gelatin silver print
Stephen Salmieri (American, b. 1945)
Coney Island
1971
Vintage gelatin silver print
Stephen Salmieri (American, b. 1945)
Coney Island
1972
Vintage gelatin silver print
Stephen Salmieri (American, b. 1945)
Coney Island
1967-1972
Vintage gelatin silver print
Robert Frank (American, 1924-2019)
Coney Island
4th of July, 1958
Gelatin silver print
Edward J. Kelty (American, 1888-1967)
Harlem Black Birds, Coney Island
1930
Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Couple at Coney Island, New York
1928
Gelatin silver print
Weegee (Arthur Fellig) (American born Ukraine, 1899-1968)
Afternoon Crowd at Coney Island
July 21st 1940
Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
Coney Island, New York City, N.Y.
1952
Gelatin silver print
Leon Levinstein (American, 1910-1988)
Coney Island
1955
Gelatin silver print
Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
Man in hat, trunks, socks and shoes, Coney Island, N.Y. 1960
1960
Gelatin silver print
Bruce Davidson (American, b. 1933)
Two Youths, Coney Island
1958
From the series Brooklyn Gang
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