Coney Island: my tribute to Martin Parr

I shot this photographic series in the summer of 2007 in the vibrant, sun-drenched chaos of Coney Island. I had just graduated from Photography School in Paris and though I was living in Boston at the time, the magnetic pull of the Brooklyn boardwalk had me make several trips to capture its unique energy. Working entirely on film with my Leica M7, my goal was to document ironic or funny moments of everyday life. Since I used film, I had to work slowly and go back several times, but that effort helped create a collection that feels vivid and lasting.

The initial spark for this project came directly from the work of Martin Parr, specifically his iconic series The Last Resort: Photographs of New Brighton. His joyful, yet candid, embrace of middle-class people in leisure, his masterful use of saturated color, and his distinctly modern approach to documentary photography were a profound inspiration. In 2007, this series was captured in a world before the omnipresence of smartphones, social media, and the relentless pressure to curate a perfect digital life.