James Van Der Zee

In the 1920s, the City of New York built an extension to its subway system, connecting downtown Manhattan to Coney Island. The extension made a day trip to the beach possible for large portions of the metropolis's population. At Coney Island, artists quickly found an intoxicating visual metaphor for the mixture of culture, class, and race in the changing urban environment. The social novelties of Coney Island take precedence for the other artists. Overlapping bodies, sometimes vulgar postures, and discordant personal encounters all intimate the loosening of behavioral and class restrictions at the city beach, a destination increasingly regarded as a place for hustlers, loose women, thieves, and sideshow freaks. In these images, people-watching is a seductive pastime for both artist and viewer.