On a damp and breezy Sunday night in October, after a dinner of Chinese food, three graduate students in photography hopped on the F train in Brooklyn and went to Coney Island. Normally a destination for sunburns, beach blanket fun and repeated rides on the Thunderbolt, on this night, the midway was nearly empty. Rather than flashing lights and screaming, the only loud music was drifting over the boardwalk from the last set of a Beck concert at the stadium. Gates had been pulled down; even the last show from the film festival had ended. Men in greasy aprons scraped clean the hamburger grills, the cash registers were tallied up, and slowly, everything around the three students drained of life.
These images were all taken that night, documenting the last shimmering fragments of summer. As a series of small details, rather than broad, expansive views of the midway, many of these pictures bring back memories of not just Coney Island, but fairs and midways throughout the summer seasons of my childhood in the Midwest. The crunch of dropped popcorn under your feet, the taste of funnel cake, screams from the Gravitron ride all echo in your ears as you view these images, remembering the past, remembering your childhood at the carnival.