Aaron Rose’s Stunning Photos of Coney Island in the 1960s at the Museum of the City of New York

Summer is quickly approaching and in just a few weeks, Coney Island beach will fill with tourists, surfers and people just wanting a good hot dog from Nathan’s. Nothing truly symbolizes NYC in the summer more than that first day on the famous boardwalk and beach. But before you waste away that summer body you have been working on due to hot-dog consumption, and praying to the heavens that someone in your group remembered to bring sun-screen, head to the Museum of The City of New York for a new exhibition of photographs by Aaron Rose.

© Aaron Rose. Untitled, Coney Island, 1961-63. Photo via MCNY.

Aaron Rose was born in New York in the 1940s and has experimented with different techniques in the darkroom to create something visually idiosyncratic. By the time he was discovered by the art world in the 1990s, he had already produced 25,000 photos—each image printed just once. The City Museum’s Curator of Photography & Prints, Sean Corcoran, considers Rose part of “the pantheon of photographers—Weegee, Bruce Davidson, Lisette Modell—who capture New Yorkers through a highly personalized and deeply artistic lens.”

© Aaron Rose. Untitled, Coney Island, 1961-63. Photo via MCNY.

This series of photography, titled In A World of Their Own, is the first exhibition of Aaron Rose’s photography of Coney Island patrons from 1961-1963. The museum will showcase 70 one-of-a-kind photos of Aaron’s early photographic journeys, with a strong emphasis on the diverse population of people, journeying from all over the city to enjoy a Summer’s day at Coney Island Beach. The exhibit opens tomorrow, May 9th and will remain open until August 3, 2014.

Also check out this Coney Island Winter Photo Essay. And if you want to see what Coney Island looked in the ’90s, we have got photographs from Gregoire Alessandrini.

If you want to re-enact the beach running scene from Rocky III (only if he gets to be Apollo), contact the author @TatteredFedora.