Previous | Next :: Sleeping Mother and Child : D Train Coney Island to Manhattan Subway : Brooklyn | June 24, 2007, 12:21 pm

I went out to Coney Island to watch the Mermaid Parade its a big deal with about a million people present by some accounts. The Mermaid Parade celebrates the start of the Summer season, and plays homage to original Coney Island Mardi Gras parades in the early 20th century. It is madly colorful and over the top. Everybody is out with their cameras its a great day for crazy exhibitionism and those amazing zappy shots of scantily clad fun loving exhibitionists in costume. Next to the annual Village Halloween Parade, the mermaid parade is closest New York has to a Mardi Gras.

I know I sound like a spoil sport....... it's a great event...... but it's not my favorite kind of event to photograph. I like to go to a school to photograph on an ordinary day not on 'earth day' when the kids are all dressed as trees. The kind of photography I am most motivated by, moved by, and interested in, captures moments in real life, special human moments from reality. Not theatrically generated moments.

I shot some 'good stuff' but not really anything I felt had a lifted or timeless quality...... I was slightly frustrated with myself and the event. I decided to roll. Then I sat opposite this sleeping mother and her child on the subway ride back to Manhattan...... and made the picture from reality Id been searching for all day.