Bruce Gilden’s Coney Island

The first time Bruce Gilden went to shoot pictures at Coney Island, he hitchhiked there from his home in Corona, Queens, because his car had been stolen. It was 1969 and he’d only picked up his first camera a year earlier.

Clad in construction boots, long trousers, and an army jacket with long sleeves, the photographer trudged back and forth along the beach, snapping sunbathers, circus sideshows, and all manner of eccentric characters strolling along the beach, midway and boardwalk.

Back then, Coney Island – 10 miles from Manhattan, on the southern tip of Brooklyn – was already well past its 1890s heyday as the summer destination for New Yorkers, enticed by its long beach and amusement attractions like the Wonder Wheel and Cyclone rollercoaster. When Gilden was there – from the late 1960s to the late 1980s – it was more seedy, more tired, partly because of competition with other Long Island beaches, but also as the result of a series of fires, and the fact that people with money could now fly to more exotic locations.

Viewed through Gilden’s probing, witty lens, Coney Island is a place crammed with characters. Consider the man posing proudly with a huge inflatable plane, or the bespectacled woman standing behind a booth that reads SEE HER CHANGE FROM BEAUTY TO BEAST, or the small, smartly dressed man standing under a dragon’s head. Whether these characters jostle for space in the frame or appear individually, the photos themselves display a sure-footed confidence that has since come to define what we think of as ‘a Gilden picture’ – fearless, in-your-face, often humorous.

Here, as part of Magnum’s summer series: ‘Life by the Sea: Exploring identity through society at leisure and the pursuit of pleasure’, the photographer takes us back to the Coney Island of yesteryear. Gilden shares memories of a beach brimming with bathers and eccentrics, and his thoughts on how the iconic location has changed over the years. 

See the rest of the stories from the series here.

Did you have some sort of routine when you were working on the Coney Island pictures?

I’d usually get there around one o’clock. I’d walk from one end of the beach – which was let’s say Coney Island, even though the beach did extend past Coney Island – all the way to the other end, which was Brighton Beach. It’s an uninterrupted stretch of beach. I was very conspicuous, wearing boots, long pants, and an army jacket. It was hard walking in the sand, and I would do two full trips: Coney Island, Brighton Beach, back to Coney Island, and back to Brighton. Then sometimes I’d even walk back to Coney Island again.

How did shooting the beach compare with the streets of New York City?

Coney Island is a lot easier to photograph than New York City because the backgrounds are cleaner and people aren’t moving. That doesn’t mean that you’ll get better pictures. It’s just easier to make a picture look good, and easier to photograph a person because they’re not moving. A lot of people are sedentary; sitting on their beach chairs. So it doesn’t test your athleticism as much.

And when I was in Coney Island it was never as crowded as it had been in the 30s, 40s, 50s, because in those days people didn’t travel as much, so since they didn’t travel they were really looking forward to a weekend at the beach. It was so packed that there was no space. Your blanket was up against someone else’s.

What is it about beach areas like this that attract so many eccentrics?

I think when you live in a place like New York City, the air is better in Coney Island, you can take a swim, it’s free, it only costs a subway ride to get out there. That’s what was part of the reason for the clientele changing there – once they put the subway in, a lot of poor people could get away. They were suffocating in the city. There was no air conditioning, they were living in tenements, it was stuffy, the air was bad, they were roasting in the hot summer. So a day at the beach was great.

Anyone who’s seen the cult movie The Warriors – which was shot at Coney Island in the 70s – might think the beach is a place populated by gangs, with regular brawls on the beach. Is there an element of lawlessness at Coney Island?

No – if people are gonna be lawless there, they’re gonna be lawless somewhere else. Maybe, years ago, I would see a fistfight. That would have been because people were drunk, so that could happen, but I don’t think people change [when they go there]. Years ago, gangs would go there, wear their colours, maybe have a fight because some other gang was there that they didn’t like. Maybe in that sense it could be a little looser there…

One time when I was very young shooting there, a black guy put his hand on my wrist and said, Give me your camera! And I said, “You must be fucking kidding me, take your hand off my fucking wrist.” If it had happened today, or if I was ten years older, I would have belted him in the face. I wouldn’t have even said a word. He wasn’t in a gang. He just thought I was a white kid that could be persuaded easily to hand over  my camera. But I never really felt threatened there, ever. I don’t photograph where I’m not comfortable. And I’m about as streetwise as they come.