Street photographer Harvey Stein’s lifelong love affair with Coney Island began the first time he entered Brooklyn’s famed seaside playground. It was the late 1950s, and he was 14 years old.
.
“I didn’t like New York, it was too big, too noisy, hot and dirty,” the Pittsburgh native remembers. “Going to Coney was a treat… As we walked the crowded boardwalk at dusk on a simmering summer day, I was mesmerized by the people. I vividly remember a fistfight between two sailors in uniforms.”
.
Stein resolved to return to Coney Island someday, never imagining that he would do so more than a thousand times.
.
In 1970, Stein returned to “America’s Playground” for a class assignment, and was captivated by the eclectic characters drawn to sun, sand, and surf. Over the next half a century, Stein would amass a singular archive of charming vignettes, a selection of which are now in view in the new exhibition, Coney Island, An Eternal Romance.
.
.
