The Punks

1988

Lynn Hyman Butler’s Coney Island Kaleidoscope series combats the idea of Coney Island as a time capsule of nostalgia. During a period of crime and political and financial instability, artists such as Butler considered the site’s uncertain fate as a subject for their work. Saturated colors glide through these playful images, taken while Butler was physically in motion, emulating the vision of a visitor in flux on an amusement park ride.

The figures in these two photographs stride forward boldly in contemporary attire: sundresses and straw hats, and leather vests with tattooed arms. The vibrant energy and sense of movement and chaos reject sentimentality, alluding to the velocity of time. Butler is interested in conveying the rush of disorder and the change from past to present Coney Island, and aims to signal the need for historic preservation in its future.