Bad Cat

16x20 inch Black & White print on Epson Art Cotton Smooth 250 gram paper. From the NYC Village Halloween Parade, 1982–86.

An enormous, skeletal puppet looms over the crowd at the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade in the mid-1980s, its ribcage-like structure composed of thin, bowed wooden supports. This black-and-white analog photograph, captured with a 35mm Pentax, highlights the intricate, web-like texture of the translucent fabric stretched across the creature's skull, which glows under the intensity of a portable commercial flash. The high-angle perspective, taken from a second-story window at 59 West Tenth Street, looks down on the masqueraders maneuvering the massive frame through the dark NYC night. Using classic Tri-X film, the scene is rendered with a gritty, high-contrast aesthetic that emphasizes the sharp lines of the puppet's jaw and the dense sea of spectators in the background. It is a striking example of the large-scale, artisanal puppetry that has become a hallmark of this annual New York City tradition, frozen in time on 35mm film.