Ronnie

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

A black-and-white 35mm street scene from the mid-eighties NYC Village Halloween Parade features a pair of marchers in striking, handcrafted attire. On the left, a figure wears a large, shaggy skeleton mask with a wide, toothy grin, while their companion on the right portrays a devilish character through a clever do-it-yourself composition of different mask parts. The face of the devil is a rubber Ronald Reagan mask, subverting the political icon with horns and a classic three-pronged pitchfork adorned with ribbons. The intense burst from a Norman 200B flash cuts through the dark October night, highlighting the textures of the costumes and the faces of the dense crowd gathered in the background. Taken between 1982 and 1986, this high-contrast capture on Kodak Tri-X film preserves the spontaneous, satirical, and slightly macabre energy that defined the Greenwich Village festivities during that era.