By Mary Staub, July, 2016
Brooklyn, NY
(originally published in the Red Hook Star-Revue)
On the surface, Coney
Island’s Mermaid Parade may seem like it is all about glitz and glam, costumes
and crowds, pomp and personas. What has drawn Luke Ratray, a Carroll Gardens
photographer, to the parade for the past twenty years, though, is the people behind
those personas. Every year since 1996, Ratray has set up his old-fashioned film
camera along the Coney Island boardwalk during the parade to find and capture
the individuals behind these created identities.
“The pageantry is fun
but not as interesting,” said Ratray. “The parade happens because people show
up. It happens because people want it to happen. I’m more interested in the
personality of those people.”
The images that Ratray
has shot of these people over the past twenty years are on view for the first
time this summer, through July 24th, in “Coney Island Mermaids, 1996
– 2016” at the Boerum Hill gallery Urban Folk Art Gallery.
Ratray’s great passion
throughout his photographic career has always been for capturing people. And people
who create identities for themselves are of particular interest to him. These
images often expose more about a person than images of a person standing naked.
“What’s funny is that
someone who creates an identity for himself and becomes someone else often
reveals more about them,” Ratray said the day before the exhibit’s opening
reception last month.
“They’re telling me more about who they are. My attempt
is to always get someone to reveal something of themselves that they normally
wouldn’t.”
Ratray shot all of his
images in black and white for a reason. First, it was just convenience. (He
could develop the images in his own dark room). But after a few years, he
realized that black and white was the best way to capture the people behind the
mermaid personas. The brash color palette of the Coney Island landscape would
easily blind a person’s ability to perceive the subtler nuances of the people
that populate that landscape.
“The noisy, chaotic
environment of Coney Island can be a distraction; it’s meant to be a distraction,
deliberately, meant to be eye candy,” said Ratrey. “I’m trying to photograph
the people inside the costumes. By shooting black and white it takes the person
out of the environment. If I were shooting color, if there’s a neon Budweiser
sign, even across the street, down the block, it will come shouting out at
you.”
Similarly, Ratray’s
use of film (versus digital) is all in service of bringing out the individual.
For him, photography is as much about the process as the product, as much about
interaction as image.
“Making portraits on
film is a completely different experience both for photographer and subject,”
said Ratray. “In terms of interacting with the person [whom your
photographing], it’s a very different thing when you’re looking in their eyes and
you get them comfortable and then immediately after you take the picture you
look into your camera. You break the interaction. People [the subjects]
immediately want to see the result, too. But the interaction is almost as
important as the picture itself.
If I’m shooting film, there’s a process, an
effort, a bit of mystery because you can’t see the picture right away. Showing
someone that I’m making the effort, they treat me differently than someone
who’s across the street with a camera and long lens.”
Over the past twenty
years, Coney Island has of course changed dramatically with chains such as
Applebee’s and It’s Sugar setting up shop. These changes are symbolic of the
broader changes that characterize all of New York City, says Ratray, and have
also colored the parade itself.
“Because [the parade]
is built off the people that show up, it tends to be a microcosmic reflection
of the city as a whole,” said Ratray, who grew up in Manhattan and has lived in
Carroll Gardens for the past twenty years. “New York City has become a
different city in the past twenty years. It’s harder to be a small business,
harder to be an artist.”
Ratray sees this
reflected in the parade. It has gone from being a small, community event when
it first launched in 1983 to being the nation’s largest “art” parade, with more
than 3000 creative participants and more than half a million spectators. And
this broader appeal has changed its flavor, says Ratray.
“I don’t want to
criticize any of it because people are having a good time and doing their thing—and
that’s all good,” said Ratray. “But as with anything else, when things grow,
with more people showing up, there’ll be less of an element of individual
creativity. Not everyone is a hard-core do-it-yourself costumer. There are
mermaid costumes being sold in Halloween stores. That’s fine. It means, though,
that many people are buying their costume and looking the same. The parade
becomes a little watered down.”
But that’s the parade,
not necessarily the people who make up the parade. It’s in search of these
people behind the personas that Ratray has kept going back year after year.
Also, he hopes that what he is doing, his images of individuals, his spotlight
on people, his emphasis on creative enterprise will bring the importance of
local artists and small business to the fore.
“Coney Island is a
place of dwindling small business—I’m a local artist and small business myself,
like many others,” said Ratray. “New York City is changing dramatically. I want
to encourage people to support small business and local artists.”
So will he ever stop?
“I’ll keep going as
long as it remains interesting—interesting to me, that is,” he said,
emphasizing that all of this, the images on view and the words spoken were just
that: his view—nothing more nothing less.
“Coney Island
Mermaids, 1996-2016” at Urban Folk Art Gallery, 101 Smith Street, Boerum Hill, www.urbanfolkart.com
Exhibit open daily through July 24, noon-8:30 pm. Free.
