Wonder Wheel at Night
Brooklyn Museum photograph
Object Label
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.
Caption
Lynn Hyman Butler American, born 1953. Wonder Wheel at Night, ca. 1988. Silver dye bleach print (Cibachrome), image: 9 1/16 x 13 3/8 in. (23 x 34 cm) sheet: 11 x 14 in. (27.9 x 35.6 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Ilford Photo Corporation, 1991.59.5. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 1991.59.5.jpg)
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Artist
Title
Wonder Wheel at Night
Date
ca. 1988
Medium
Silver dye bleach print (Cibachrome)
Classification
Dimensions
image: 9 1/16 x 13 3/8 in. (23 x 34 cm) sheet: 11 x 14 in. (27.9 x 35.6 cm)
Credit Line
Gift of Ilford Photo Corporation
Accession Number
1991.59.5
Rights
© artist or artist's estate
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Frequent Art Questions
You're looking at a work by Lynn Hyman Butler "Wonder Wheel at Night." Its one of the few color works on view in Forever Coney. Though the technique used to make it is very different from traditional color photography. Would you like to hear more about Butler's process for making this (I warn you it is very photo-techy!)
Thank you. That is what I wanted to know! I have no idea about "silver dye bleach technique".The simplest explanation is that as the only available method to create handmade photographic prints directly from color slide film. It is a direct-positive, meaning that no negatives are created or used, unlike traditional color processes. Yellow, magenta and cyan dyes are incorporated into a white-opaque polyester based paper and bleached during processing to reveal their latent color. Likely the artist shot these images in her large format camera with a slow exposure, to achieve the motion blur. and later altered the color effects in the developing in the dark room.The artist has said, "I try to capture the sense of time passing. I hope that the photographs will be a reminder that we are on the edge of a century in which the fate of many life forms, including our own, will be determined, and the decision of whether to save or relinquish landscapes such as these will be of increasing urgency."Amazing. Thanks for the answer. This is very helpful!You're welcome! It is a truly difficult process, and increasingly rare as production of the materials has recently ended.
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