Something remarkable happens when O’Grady combines her own family portraits with ancient Egyptian imagery. Some of these juxtapositions are tender and intimate, with mood and gestures strikingly fusing family and family matters millennia apart. The work immediately became a favorite of our installation Extended Family and it merges the personal with the historic, relating beyond the Contemporary Galleries to the Museum’s world renowned collection of Egyptian Art.

Lorraine O’Grady (American, born 1934). Miscegenated Family Album, 1994. Silver dye bleach (Cibachrome) print, 32 prints each: 20 x 16 in. (50.8 x 40.6 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Purchased with funds given by Shelley and Philip E. Aarons, John and Barbara Vogelstein, and bequest of Richard J. Kempe, by exchange, 2008.80. © Lorraine O’Grady

Miscegenated Family Album consists of sixteen pairs of black-and-white and color portraits. Each framed pair juxtaposes images of members of the artist’s family, often her sister Devonia, with images mostly portraying the Egyptian queen Nefertiti and her family. The work grew out of O’Grady’s 1980 performance, Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline, which took place in front of a larger series of projected images of a similar kind. Devonia died unexpectedly at the age of thirty-seven before the sisters had time to reconcile their troubled relationship. The performance was a way for the artist to mourn her dead sister, her only sibling, and work through their fraught and complex bond.

The use of Egyptian imagery came naturally to O’Grady who found a physical resemblance between her sister and the Egyptian family imagery she chose. In the same way, she found similarities in the family histories. Nefertiti’s sister Mutnedjmet plays an important role in many of the pictures and the Egyptian queen disappeared from public life at an age close to Devonia’s at the time of her death. Egyptian art from this period around 1340 BC is known for its realistic and informal depictions of family life and its intimate portrayal of affection between family members. (The Brooklyn Museum has a wonderful collection of portrait reliefs from this period, including the piece called A Mother’s Kiss, which O’Grady used for her work—see below.)

Relief of Queen Nefertiti Kissing One of Her Daughters, ca. 1352-1336 B.C.E. Limestone, painted, 8 3/4 x 1 5/16 x 17 1/2 in. (22.2 x 3.4 x 44.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 60.197.8.

At the same time as the subject matter is deeply personal, through it O’Grady also addresses issues of class, racism, ethnography and African American art. The piece is also a commentary on hybridity. Born in Boston in 1934 to West Indian parents, O’Grady always approaches biculturalism in her art and acknowledges the importance of the diaspora experience for her life and work: the need to reconcile conflicting values and different backgrounds, and, as O’Grady writes, the necessity “to build a bridge to some other place.”

Miscegenated Family Album will remain on view until September 5.

Last year I blogged about a great new acquisition, Hank Willis Thomas’ “Unbranded: Reflections in Black by Corporate America.” I am thrilled that we have now installed this series of 41 photographs on the Museum’s fifth floor. It is a beautiful and thought-provoking work and it looks spectacular in the space. It will be on view until next spring.

Hank Willis Thomas from Brooklyn Museum on Vimeo.

In this delicate group of black and white photographs, Dash Snow captures his family and extended family of friends in an intimate and unguarded fashion. In a diaristic snapshot of Chinatown at night, a young woman (Snow’s wife Jade) sits in a doorway with the stroller on the sidewalk close by. Despondent, head in hand, or just tired after a long night out (Dash forgetting the house keys, or so the story goes), the mundane snap shot is full of emotion. Another image shows the couple’s baby daughter in bed sound asleep, humorously juxtaposed with the child-unfriendly traces of a parent’s night out. The poetic rendering of Jade’s naked back bears trace of an intimate encounter and a street portrait of a friend hints at the androgynity of adolescence. A refashioned old portrait of the artist’s grandmother adds glamour to the group while an intense self-portrait shows the bearded artist in profile, the whites of his wildly gazing eyes glowing against his mud covered face. Best known for his often candid Polaroid snapshots, Dash Snow has received much attention over the past few years. An elusive graffiti tagger turned visual artist and Whitney Biennial participant, Snow is part of a tightly knit group of downtown artists who turn life into art in the manner of artists such as Nan Goldin, Larry Clark or Wolfgang Tillmans.

Sarah Baley (American, born 1969).  Dug, 2005. From the series: Bois, 2009. Chromogenic print, 24 x 20 in. (61 x 50.8 cm).  Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the Artist, 2009.14.

Youth culture and sexuality have often influenced both fashion photography and contemporary art. The work of Sarah Baley, an emerging Brooklyn-based artist, is indebted to the confluence of interests and close dialogue between these worlds in the recent decade. Her series “Bois” is an exploration of a Brooklyn-based, lesbian community who identify as bois. Many in the group call themselves gender queer, which implies a rejection of the gender binary system and an embrace of sexuality as a sliding scale of possibilities. In Baley’s view, sexuality has become one of the few ways in which people can still express freedom. In this image, “Dug,” Baley placed her subject—staged her, dramatically lit—by the East River close to the Brooklyn Bridge. The evolving industrial urban landscape, reflected in the rapid development of Brooklyn’s waterfront, functions as a metaphor or mirror for the group’s fluid definition of sexuality and gender. This photograph will be included in an installation of contemporary art at the Museum this coming August and Sarah’s show is on view at Collette Blanchard Gallery through June 17, 2009.

Lynn Hyman Butler, American, born 1953. The Girl with a Gun. From the series “Coney Island Kaleidoscope” ca. 1988. Cibachrome color print. sheet: 11 x 13 3/4 in. image: 9 x 13 1/4 in. Gift of Ilford Photo Corporation. 1991.59.6

Lynn Hyman Butler, American, born 1953. The Red Horse. From the series “Coney Island Kaleidoscope” ca. 1989. Cibachrome color print. sheet: 11 x 13 3/4 in. image: 9 x 13 1/4 in. Gift of Ilford Photo Corporation. 1991.59.3

In 1983, the not-for-profit corporation Coney Island USA was created to assist in rejuvenating Coney Island’s amusement life. It developed many of the programs that later generations of visitors recognize, such as the Mermaid Parade, Sideshows by the Seashore, and concerts on the boardwalk. Lynn Butler’s dynamic take on the site in her Coney Island Kaleidoscope series is a document of a gritty and still spectacular Coney Island from this period.

Sunset Over Coney Island, April 2006, Flatbush Gardener (from the Goodbye Coney Island? group on Flickr)

In 2006 the owners sold Astroland to a developer who had already assembled a large amount of land in Coney Island’s old amusement area. A short-term lease will allow them to reopen next summer, but it remains unclear whether the developer’s plan for towering hotels, shops, restaurants, movie theaters, and high-tech entertainment will be accepted or rebuffed by city authorities, who proposed their own scheme last fall.

Mermaid Parade Hula Hoopers, drfardook (from the Goodbye Coney Island? group on Flickr)

In the past few years, attempts to revitalize Coney Island have increased; KeySpan Park and the new Stillwell Avenue subway station are the most obvious examples. While many agree that rejuvenation is necessary, voices have been raised against the prospect of turning Coney Island into a gentrified enclave for the well-off.

break dance!, ranjit (from the Goodbye Coney Island? group on Flickr)

New York City’s creation of a Coney Island Development Corporation in 2003 brought together city officials as well as local business and community leaders. This initiative indicated awareness of the importance of caring for the area’s traditional qualities and of keeping it available to a diverse audience while providing a wide-ranging plan for economic development that would include a year-round amusement district as well as many new residential opportunities. At this moment, it is uncertain what the result of these efforts will be.

Shoot The Live Human, Cormac Phelan (from the Goodbye Coney Island? group on Flickr)

The straight-forward composition of Cormac Phelan’s gap between two buildings focuses on the sad remains of a popular game. Of course there is an element of humor, but there is also a disturbing atmosphere of gloom and even sorrow, both in the site’s state of decay and in the references to the game itself: Shoot the Freak. Live Human Targets.

hose play, schveckle (from the Goodbye Coney Island? group on Flickr)

schveckle’s creatively and composed snapshot is most probably taken right next to the gap in the previous picture, but here gloom is replaced by summer joy. The wonderful colors, the laughing biker crossing the boardwalk, the girl having a shower, and the onlookers leaning against the railing; nobody seems to be shooting the freak.

Steeplechase Pier, Coney Island, 1938. Sidney Kerner, American, born 1920. Gelatin silver print. Gift of the artist. 1995.128.1

The depression years in the 1930s were difficult everywhere and this was the first time Coney Island really suffered a downturn, as a reduced disposable income made people less prone to spend money on entertainment. Enjoying the free beach and boardwalk promenades, the crowds still arrived in great numbers, but income from amusement concessions plunged even though many barkers and operators cut prices in half. Luna Park, one of the three original amusement parks, went into bankruptcy in 1933, and when it reopened after a brief closing, the park could only afford to light a fraction of its many bulbs. Many people, even families, used the space beneath the boardwalk as temporary shelter. In an effort to use the camera as a tool to reflect a difficult social climate, Sidney Kerner, a Brooklyn-born photographer, had joined Paul Strand’s and Berenice Abbott’s newly established Photo League in 1937, a year before he took his remarkable picture of a depression era kid on Coney Island.

Coney Island, Depression Girl with Safety Pin, 1938. Sidney Kerner, American, born 1920. Gelatin silver print. Gift of the artist. 1995.128.6

Air View of Coney Island Beach and Boardwalk, Brooklyn, 1946. Ben Ross. Gelatin silver print. Gift of the artist. 1998.34

In the prosperity that followed World War II in America, families found themselves with more money to spend, and Coney experienced a brief moment of renewal, with record crowds in the summer seasons of the late 1940s. But the rise of Coney Island in the postwar years was temporary, and from the 1950s, Coney was in steady decline. Postwar suburbanization, car culture, and the creation of parkways and public state parks such as Jones Beach offered people alternatives for day trips in the summer. Robert Moses, New York City’s powerful Parks Commissioner, objected to the kind of entertainment Coney offered with its penny arcades, shooting galleries, rides, and sideshows.

Out to sea, Marc Arsenault – Wow Cool (from the Goodbye Coney Island? group on Flickr)

In 1938 his Parks Department took control of the beach at Coney Island, with efforts to reduce the level of amusements. In the 1950s and 1960s large areas were used for new housing projects built on Moses’s initiative. Widespread gang violence in the 1950s frightened some visitors, and when Steeplechase closed for good in 1964 – a victim of rising crime, neighborhood decline, and competing entertainment – the area dedicated to amusement was dramatically reduced. At this time, a new amusement park, Astroland, had already been established for a few years between Surf Avenue and the boardwalk west of West Tenth Street. This park carried on the Coney tradition during the following decades.

Left: Coney Island, 1969. Stephen Salmieri. Gelatin silver print. Gift of Edward Klein. 82.201.4

Right: Burger Man, urbanshoregirl (from the Goodbye Coney Island? group on Flickr)

In the postwar period Coney Island remained an almost obligatory subject for most photographers visiting or living in New York. New and more affordable lightweight cameras allowed photographers to be freer in the exploration of their topic. Brooklyn-born Stephen Salmieri had just graduated from School of Visual Arts when he started his Coney Island series in 1966. Working in the tradition of many mid-20th-century independent photographers (such as Robert Frank and Lisette Model) who found Coney Island an inspiring subject, Salmieri spent the following six years in documenting a decaying area, still full of life. Coney Island as a democratic destination for everyone subsisted, as testified in Salmieri’s images as well as in many of the pictures on Flickr.

Left: Coney Island, 1969. Stephen Salmieri. Gelatin silver print. Gift of Edward Klein. 82.201.39

Right: ballon water, Supercapacity (from the Goodbye Coney Island? group on Flickr)

It’s wonderful to be able to juxtapose Salmieri’s photos with these contemporary images, showing that there is still a stretch of concession stands on the Bowery, not much different from the ones in Salmieri’s suite of images from forty years ago. Even though some barkers are now relying on electronic amplification to lure passersby to their games, the original intention remains the same. Look especially at supercapacity’s absolutely stunning rendering of a shooting gallery, an image where the spectacular composition and the play with focus communicate both humor and gravity.

Wonder Wheel, van swearingen

untitled, luluinnyc

For this blog I selected a few really striking images from the Flickr group, some of them showing, even today, that the classic rides from the 1920s are among the most popular subjects to shoot. There were earlier Ferris wheels at Coney, but it is the colorful Wonder Wheel, with its double ring of cars, that has infused visitors’ imagination since 1920. Look particularly at van swearingen’s incredible image of the wheel, with a dramatic and complex composition, and also at the more low-key drama of luluinnyc’s interpretation of the wheel and the surrounding rides.

cyclone, chutney bannister

Today, the only remainder of the three classic roller coasters is the Cyclone from 1927, a New York City Historic Landmark since 1991. The Tornado, from 1926, burned in 1977, and the Thunderbolt, from 1925, was closed in 1983 and demolished in 2000. One photographer in the group, egulvision, captured this sad moment.

Thunderbolt Demo. Nov. 17, 2000, egulvision

The Thunderbolt was the first of the three signature wooden roller coasters of the 1920s. It was built on the Bowery in 1925 on top of the late nineteenth-century Kensington Hotel, and was featured in Woody Allen’s film Annie Hall, where the character Alvy Singer lived under the roller coaster in the former hotel, occupied until the end.

f-coney island 17, penmadison

The 1920s was a prosperous period for Coney Island. In 1920 the subway was extended all the way out, making the trip even faster and cheaper than before. Up to one million visitors a day would come to enjoy the beaches and the amusement parks with higher and faster rides. The subway, like many of the rides and the famous hot dogs at Nathan’s (beautifully captured in pennmadison’s shot), cost five cents, a fact that contributed to the description of Coney as the Nickel Empire.

Coney Island Sunset, Architectural Orphans

The Coney Island beach was made public in 1915 after a long legal battle, and the boardwalk was finally constructed in 1923. Municipal baths replaced the many private establishments, and the city added sand to fight erosion and create more beachfront. At this point the exclusive Seagate had long since separated from the main part of Coney, while the eastern end had gone out of fashion, with the last remaining luxury resorts quickly disappearing. The Oriental Hotel closed in 1916, and Brighton Beach Hotel was razed a few years later. Many Eastern European Jews and Italian and Greek immigrants also took up residence in the neighborhood in this period. By now, Dreamland was long gone, and Luna Park was somewhat declining, but Steeplechase, the first of the three classic amusement parks, was still a popular destination.

Coney Island Parachute Jump, minimal design

Another important landmark, visible in many of the images on Flickr, is the Parachute Jump. Today covered in a coat of red paint, the Parachute Jump is the only remaining sign of Steeplechase Park (which closed in 1964). The steel tower originated as a ride at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, and the Tilyou family bought it for Steeplechase in 1941. In the years during and after World War II, riders were hoisted to the top of the tower in a canvas seat attached to a closed parachute. When dropped from the top, only the parachute would slow the descent. Like the Wonder Wheel, the Cyclone, and Childs’ Restaurant, the tower is protected and will remain at Coney Island even after the redevelopment of the area.

Time to rain, balitc 86

The history of Coney Island from the 1890s and through the first decade of the 20th century is very much the history of three successful amusement parks: Steeplechase, Luna Park, and Dreamland. The Tilyou family had been influential in developing Coney Island ever since Peter Tilyou established one of the area’s first hotels and taverns in the 1860s, and the first of the three important parks was also a Tilyou creation. In 1897, Peter’s son George combined the family’s many sprawling concessions around the Bowery and opened Steeplechase Park on the beach between West Sixteenth and West Nineteenth streets. He was inspired by the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 and by an earlier enclosed amusement park at Coney, Paul Boyton’s Sea Lion Park. Tilyou charged admission and provided affordable entertainment (a roller coaster, a scenic railroad, a Ferris wheel, a funhouse, a bathing pavilion, food, and dancing) for a mass audience inside an enclosure that was supposed to keep crime and violence outside. The main attraction was a mechanical horserace that gave the park its name and reflected the popularity of horseracing at Coney, at this time the country’s horse-racing capital. (Racetracks had been built at Brighton Beach, Sheepshead Bay, and Gravesend to serve the wealthy and fashionable clientele in the 1870s and 1880s.) Tilyou rebuilt Steeplechase after a fire in 1907, and many of the rides, from the Earthquake Stairway to the Human Pool Table, were moved indoors to the Pavilion of Fun, a large steel and glass building. The most long-lived and profitable of Coney’s three historical amusement parks, Steeplechase did not close its doors until 1964, and even today, Tilyou’s emblem, the funny face, is considered Coney Island’s mascot.

Frederic Thompson and Elmer Dundy, with experience of running concessions at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition and other fairs, had brought their successful simulation of a spaceship ride, “A Trip to the Moon,” to Steeplechase in 1902. Because of the success, they decided, the following year, to open their own amusement venture, Luna Park, on the site of Boyton’s failing Sea Lion Park, on Surf Avenue between West Eighth and West Twelfth streets. Two hundred fifty thousand electric lights turned night into day, with an imaginary architecture of many exotic spires and domes in white, orange, and gold. A two-hundred-foot tower covered in thousands of electric lights which constantly changed colors was Luna Park’s centerpiece and was a fixture of nighttime Coney Island. Luna’s twenty-two acres were dedicated entirely to pleasure and play with concerts, fireworks, and carnivalesque performances, in addition to the many fanciful and creative rides that employed all the technical innovations of the day. The Helter Skelter was a hugely popular, adults-only giant slide. From a fifty-foot tower, people would tumble down the slide on little mats, skirts flying, to the amusement of the masses gathered on the ground. Luna Park also provided otherworldly experiences from far corners of the globe, from gondola rides on the canals of Venice to Eskimo villages, the Swiss Alps, and a Delhi marketplace. Variations of the Tunnels of Love were among the most popular of the early rides in the amusement parks at Coney. Like many other rides, they encouraged informal contact between men and women and provided new opportunities for interaction between young people. We have to remember that when these rides were introduced at the turn of the twentieth century, social etiquette often still made relaxed communication difficult. The Dragon’s Gorge was an enclosed roller coaster, a scenic railroad that brought the passenger on a fantastic trip from the bottom of the sea, through a waterfall, to the North Pole, Africa, the Grand Canyon, and even into Hades, the kingdom of Death, over the river Styx. Two dragons framed the entrance, their eyes glowing with light from globes of green electric light. The ride caught fire in 1944, ultimately leading to the closing of the park two years later.

William H. Reynolds’s Dreamland, constructed in 1904, was the third of the historical amusement parks at Coney Island. In an effort to attract a middle-class audience that otherwise might be deterred by the excesses of Coney, its all-white, more traditional design, in line with the White City of the 1893 Chicago Exposition, signaled purity rather than offering the orientalist exoticism of Luna Park’s imaginary architecture. With biblically inspired spectacles, it was meant to provide an alternative to the evils of dance halls and bars. “Creation,” a moving panorama under a giant blue dome, presented both the creation, according to the book of Genesis, and the end of the world. Its entrance on Surf Avenue was an arched portal supported by an enormous angel with her wings spread out. With taller towers, one million electric lights, and a capacity to accommodate one hundred thousand visitors, Dreamland sought to outshine its neighbors, but never reached the popularity of Luna Park or Steeplechese.

Beside the many different rides, disaster spectacles – both independently operated on Surf Avenue, and at Luna Park and Dreamland – were common at Coney Island. Reenactments of war battles, from Gettysburg to the more contemporary Boer wars, competed for attention with scenes of natural catastrophes such as the Galveston Flood of 1900. Luna Park’s “Fire and Flames” was a popular disaster spectacle in which firemen rescued several hundred actors from a burning six-story hotel, and Dreamland had its own fire-fighting display, “Fighting the Flames,” with even more firemen and actors. Not just spectacles, but real fires were common at Coney Island. Sometimes they engulfed large swaths of the mostly wooden structures in the area: a devastating fire took place on the Bowery in 1903; Steeplechase burned in 1907 (but was completely rebuilt eight months later); Dreamland burned in 1911, never to reopen. With Dreamland gone, many felt that the old Coney Island would soon disappear.

The west end of Coney Island attracted up to five hundred thousand people on weekends and holidays about 1900, and in 1909, perhaps the most successful year ever, about twenty million visitors arrived. Luna Park alone charged thirty-one million admissions between 1903 and 1908. The phenomenon of Coney Island was the epitome of mass culture. Dancing pavilions, concert halls, and restaurants like Stauch’s provided new opportunities for people to meet and contributed to changing the dynamics between the sexes at the turn of the twentieth century. The newly gained recreational time for the working classes was available to most people, and the new forms of mass entertainment and leisure activities created unprecedented possibilities for more informal mingling between the sexes. Public transportation was crucial for the success, and at this time – in addition to multiple ferry and railroad connections – a trolley service was running from Park Row on lower Manhattan across the Brooklyn Bridge, inaugurated in 1883. This provided another easy and relatively cheap trip for many working-class and immigrant visitors to Coney. The construction of the Williamsburg Bridge in 1903 and the Manhattan Bridge in 1909 made the trip even more effortless. The trolley would eventually be replaced by the subway, which was extended to Coney Island in 1920.

Slideshow created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR. Having trouble seeing the slideshow? Photos are also on Flickr.