The Self-Described 'Hermit' Who Took Some of History's Most Unforgettable Pictures of Coney Island

In Aaron Rose's pictures of Coney Island, you can see everything. Flesh, yes; that’s what he went looking for, and he got it, in all its imperfect glory. The photographer went to Coney Island seeking the drama of the human figure, unveiled. This, at a time in history when men wore hats and suits and women wore white gloves and modest dresses. "Bodies, anatomy," says Rose. "To be exposed, to have it all around you, to see the true source of light, which is the sun, which is constantly changing. Where else would I find bodies so abundantly?"

But there’s much more than bodies in these photographs, on view now at the Museum of the City of New York in a show called “In a World of Their Own: Coney Island Photographs by Aaron Rose.” On the beach, Rose also captured emotion, intimacy, and the defiant freedom that urban people feel when they are released from their workaday routine to the water and the sun.