MATTER
João Unzer, CCO, on a romance with a boardwalk.
When I first went to Coney Island, my love affair with the amusement park, the beach and the people who inhabit it began.
Entering Coney Island is like stepping into another culture. There is a sense of escape from daily worries, and a lot of pleasure, whether sunbathing on the beach, riding an amusement or walking the boardwalk. It is a fantasyland where it is fine to be unique and to ignore the standards society hands you.
Open full image ↗I kept going back. Every trip the same boardwalk, never the same people. A man with a metal detector and a hat that says money three times. A woman in a printed swimsuit walking into the fog like she owns it. Somebody alone in the water at seven in the morning, thinking about nothing, which is the whole point of the place.
Coney Island has been photographed for as long as cameras could leave the studio. Weegee shot the beach in 1940 so full you cannot find the sand. Arbus found her people on this boardwalk. Bruce Gilden got close enough to smell the sunscreen. Harold Feinstein spent sixty years on these few blocks and said he never got to the bottom of them.
I am not claiming a place in that line. I am in the queue behind it, holding a camera and a hot dog.
Open full image ↗Citizens of Coney Island is my romance with this iconic, historical place. It is also the closest thing I have to a method. Go somewhere, stay long enough to stop being a visitor, and photograph the people who never left.
It is also the best casting room in America, and nobody in it is acting. My day job is inventing characters that feel found. Brands spend months of styling to reach what a man with a metal detector achieved by getting dressed. Here everybody committed to the look years ago, and none of them asked for approval. I take notes.
Three covers, one series. Nobody was posed. Everybody was already dressed for it.
João Unzer is Chief Creative Officer at MATTER+ENERGY, in São Paulo.