USA. Coney Island, NY. 1959. Brooklyn Gang. Bengie and friends at Bay Twenty-two, Coney Island. Clockwise from left: Bengie, Junior, Bryan, Lefty.
USA. Coney Island, NY. 1959. Brooklyn Gang. Benji in bathhouse.
USA. Coney Island, NY. 1959. Brooklyn Gang. On the boardwalk at West Thirty-third Street, Coney Island. Left to right: Junior, Bengie, Lefty.
USA. Coney Island, NY. 1959. Brooklyn Gang. Outside Mike’s tattoo shop in Coney Island.
USA. New York City. 1959. Brooklyn Gang.
USA. Brooklyn, NY. 1959. Brooklyn Gang.
USA. New York City. 1959. Brooklyn Gang.
USA. New York City. 1959. Brooklyn Gang. Backseat of a car.
USA. New York City. 1959. Brooklyn Gang. On a bus.
USA. New York City. 1959. Brooklyn Gang. Teenager couple smoking at a kitchen table.
USA. New York City. 1959. Brooklyn Gang.
USA. Brooklyn, NY. 1957. Couple necking on pole at basement party while girl looks on, from Brooklyn Gang.
USA. New York City. 1959. Brooklyn Gang.
USA. Brooklyn, NY. 1959. Brooklyn Gang.
USA. New York City. 1959. Brooklyn Gang.
USA. Brooklyn, NY. 1959. Brooklyn Gang. On a Brooklyn subway.
In 1959, photographer Bruce Davidson read about the teenage gangs of New York City. Connecting with a social worker to make initial contact with a gang in Brooklyn called The Jokers, Davidson became a daily observer and photographer of this alienated youth culture. The Fifties are often considered passive and pale by our standards of urban reality, but Davidson’s photographs prove otherwise. These photographs of Brooklyn gangs, Davidson’s first photographic project, were undertaken when he was not much older than the boys depicted in the work.
Davidson, a Magnum photographer, has recently published a monograph entitled Brooklyn Gang, containing 70 images from this documentary series and some interviews as well. These images had never been published together as a whole until the recent publication of this book.
“We must also dissect why images such as this one resonate to a larger global community so quickly and we must de-stabilize somehow the tenuous relationship between the press and the Hollywoodization of the images that are meant to produce information lest it all becomes to difficult to distinguish image-reality from image-projection”
The Image of the assassination of Russian ambassador Andrei Karlov by Turkish 22 year old off duty policeman Mevlut Mert Altintas by photographer Burhan Ozbilic has set alarm bells ringing for denizens of the press, but also the photographic community. Questions of under whose authority and moral compass should one print such an image arise as do the questions of what it means to engage in confrontation with an extreme image. Continue reading HOLLYWOOD, ANKARA: SUPERFAMILIARITY and TERROR By Brad Feuerhelm on December 21, 2016→
A mother and children rest as they and over 40 men, women and children camp out at City Hall in St. Louis, Mo., April 29, 1936, the heights of the Great Depression. When a St. Louis alderman took no action to increase relief appropriations, protesters descended upon City Hall and threatened to stay “‘til hell freezes over or we get relief.” They started their second day in the building this day.
The History of Central Park’s Hooverville, the Great Depression Pop-Up Shanty Town
NOVEMBER 17, 2015
BY REBECCA PAUL
In October of 1929, the stock market experienced a devastating crash resulting in an unprecedented number of people in the U.S. without homes or jobs, a period of history now known as the Clutch Plague. While homelessness was present prior to the crash, the group was relatively small and cities were able to provide adequate shelter through various municipal housing projects. However, as the Depression set in, demand grew and the overflow became far too overwhelming and unmanageable for government resources to keep up with. Homeless people in large cities began to build their own houses out of found materials, and some even built more permanent structures from brick. Small shanty towns—later named Hoovervilles after President Hoover—began to spring up in vacant lots, public land and empty alleys. Three of these pop-up villages were located in New York City; the largest of them was on what is now Central Park’s Great Lawn.
At the same time as the stock market crash, the reservoir in Central Park, north of Belvedere Castle, was drained and taken out of service leaving a large expanse of open land for what would become the Great Lawn. The construction planned for the area had been delayed due to the economic crisis.
Skid Row, San Francisco, California (Great Depression), 1937
The Incubator 