Coney Island -- Where Everyone Belongs
Liliana Caruana | New York, United States
Photographer: Liliana Caruana
Exhibit Title: Coney Island -- Where Everyone Belongs
Location: New York, United States
Coney Islandexplores the beach as a shared public space where identity, memory, and self-expression unfold. Shaped by the artist’s experience as an immigrant to Brooklyn, the work observes how individuals inhabit the shoreline through acts of presence—gestures of culture, ritual, and belonging. Together, the photographs form a portrait of a place where differences coexist, and where everyone belongs.
lilianacaruanaphotography.com
Coney Island was my family's first beach in America—accessible by subway from Brooklyn, crowded with blankets pressed edge to edge, each inhabited by people from different countries speaking different languages. This density and difference wasn't a problem; it was simply how the space existed.
As a child, I was fascinated by this place where many worlds met and coexisted. The crowds have thinned, but the diversity remains. Coney Island is not just a beach—it's a place to be seen, where individuals present themselves through dress, gesture, ritual, and performance.
Here, the organization Spirits of the Ancestors of the Middle Passage gathers annually to honor enslaved Africans, offering music and flowers to the ocean. Other cultures perform music of their own—African and Puerto Rican music and dancing happen every weekend. Hassidic Jews celebrate holidays with their families here, and I often see Muslim worshippers reading the Quran facing the sea. These moments exist alongside the everyday—people at rest, in motion, in intimacy, or quiet self-expression.
What I photograph are these acts of presence—fleeting, vivid gestures that together form a portrait of a place where individuality is continuously performed and witnessed, where everyone belongs.
LRC1946@ICLOUD.COM
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