Harvey Stein “Coney Island/Harlem: A Portrait of Two Communities”
Leica Gallery in New York
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Harvey Stein is a renowned New York City-based photographer who has had six photography books published to date. In addition to his prolific career as a professional photographer, he is also a celebrated teacher, lecturer, author and curator. Known to many for his long-term street and documentary projects, Stein’s body of images covers a wide array of subjects, ranging from twins to environmental portraits of artists in their studios to up-close portrayals of Italian and New York street life. His longest-running continuous project focuses on Coney Island. He has been avidly photographing Coney Island since 1970 and has published two books focusing on the people, events, and atmosphere that make up the island. In the spring of 2011 Schiffer Publishing released his book Coney Island 40 Years. This book presents an intimate, raw, and seemingly timeless look at four decades of the ever-evolving region. The portraits of the island’s community evoke a sensitive dialogue between subject and photographer.
Coney Island is about people; it’s the people that intrigue me and what I am always drawn to photograph. All sizes, shapes, races, ages, religions, behaviors. The amusements, the sea, the open air, the sun and sand all impart a kind of freedom of behavior that I don’t see anywhere else. And I am interested in the contradictions and ironies present in its social world. I am always impressed with how we all get along at Coney Island.
-Harvey Stein, interview with Lenscratch, June 2011
The first photographic encounter Harvey Stein had with Harlem was when he documented the annual African-American parade on Malcolm X Boulevard in 1990. Swept away by the spirit and humanity of the legendary neighborhood and its inhabitants, Stein continued to photograph Harlem for 23 years from 1990 to 2012. His close-up, evocative portraits of the people of Harlem are published for the first time in Harlem Street Portraits (Schiffer Publishing, October 2013).
Stein’s photographs of Harlem reveal his reverence and love for the friendliness and warmth of Harlem’s everyday men and women, and the vibrant and bustling vitality of a historic place that has been the center of African American life and culture for over 100 years. Shooting with a wide-angle lens, Stein’s close encounters with families, couples, friends, the elderly, and youth are honest, direct and involving. Each portrait is more than a depiction of a person; it is an intimate record that necessitates direct engagement between photographer and subject showing the mutuality between people.
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from January 10, 2014 to February 22, 2014