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 4x5 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 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.

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).