Polka Dots

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

A large, shaggy goat puppet commands the foreground of this black-and-white scene, its oversized horns and expressive eyes typical of the imaginative creations found at the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade in the mid-1980s. Captured on Tri-X film with a 35mm Pentax, the image crackles with the energy of the New York City night, frozen in time by the sharp illumination of a professional strobe. The flash reveals a diverse crowd of revelers in the background, including a woman in a distinctive polka-dot hat and another in a denim jacket, all part of the eclectic atmosphere. This high-contrast black-and-white photograph serves as a visceral document of the street-level theatricality that defined the parade during this era.