"Coney Island Bather, New York"

gelatin silver print

Coney Island Bather, New York is one of the best-known works by the Austrian-American photographer Lisette Model and was created between 1939 and 1941. It shows a "full-figured" woman in a swimsuit on Coney Island beach in southern Brooklyn – shot from the front, self-confident and undisguised. This work is a prime example of Model's direct, ruthlessly realistic style, which differed radically from the idealized depictions in fashion and portrait photography. She was interested in the so-called "marginal figures" of public life: people who did not conform to the usual norms of beauty and society, but who stood in front of the camera with great presence. In Coney Island Bather, it is precisely this attitude that is expressed. The image is neither voyeuristic nor condescending, but characterized by a raw respect for the person portrayed. The closeness to the figure, the grainy resolution and the strong contrast lend the photograph a physical presence and authenticity that was revolutionary in contemporary photography.
Model herself once said "Never photograph anything you are not passionately interested in."¹ This illustrates her approach to photography as an emotionally driven act that does not merely observe, but participates. At the same time, the image points to a subtle social critique: by making bodies beyond the ideal visible, Model not only addresses individuality, but also social conventions and exclusion. Her approach influenced later photographers such as Diane Arbus, who studied with Model and whose own work is strongly influenced by this uncompromising view of the human. Coney Island Bather therefore not only represents an iconic snapshot of everyday life in New York, but also a paradigm shift in 20^th century documentary photography.
(Christoph Fuchs, transl. by deepL)

Notes:

1
Lisette Model, quoted in: Berenice Abbott, Lisette Model, New York 1979, p 9.

2
"Brodovitch on Fotografie", Popular Photography, December 1961, n.p.