Coney Island, NY

Sid Grossman was a founding member of New York’s Photo League, a left-wing organization that promoted documentary photography as a means for social change. There he taught classes, formed production groups, wrote articles, and served in various administrative roles until the group disbanded in 1951. Grossman spent two years photographing summer life on the democratic, chaotic beaches of Coney Island. Although free of the social commentary that characterized much of his other work, these pictures revel in intimacy and liberation, with bodies in constant proximity. Here four unknown beachgoers, shot from below, serve to monumentalize and preserve the ephemeral feeling of carefree youth.