Coney Island: A “Sun-baked Melting Pot”

The diversity of people—and what they are doing—is immediately arresting, as the photographs capture intimate portraits of regular and uninhibited New Yorkers in a world of their own. © Aaron Rose/Courtesy Museum of the City of New York

Rose's photographs showcase the rich mix of races, ethnicities, sexualities, and body types on display on the sandy landscape of Coney Island—described by Aletti as "a place where privacy is a state of mind." © Aaron Rose/Courtesy Museum of the City of New York

Photography critic Vince Aletti has described Rose's Coney Island photographs as remarkably intimate portraits of people relaxing as if in the privacy of their own homes. © Aaron Rose/Courtesy Museum of the City of New York

Rose seized upon a new technology—chromogenic color film—for these images and pushed the boundaries of this new process by increasing the speed and grain of the film to make images that would not otherwise be possible. © Aaron Rose/Courtesy Museum of the City of New York

Winter is over, and many people, New Yorker’s included, will hit the beach this Memorial Day (weather-permitting) to kick off the summer. The beach is a great place to get away from the daily grind, kick back, and relax. New York City-born, and raised, photographer Aaron Rose has spent more than 60 years exploring it, but only began showing work in the 1990s. Rose’s images of sunbathers and boardwalk-walkers in Coney Island, “In a World of Their Own: Coney Island Photographs by Aaron Rose,” are currently on display at the Museum of the City of New York through Sunday, August 3, 2014. “[The exhibit] shows New Yorkers in an unusually carefree environment, pushing bounds of privacy,” says Susan Henshaw Jones, the Ronay Menschel Director of the Museum of the City of New York in a statement about the exhibit. “Rose’s photographs capture the vibrant and diverse mix of races, ethnicities, genders, and body types that create the city of New York: a literal ‘sun-baked melting pot.”