Snake

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

In this black-and-white capture from a mid-1980s NYC Village Halloween Parade, a massive, zigzag-patterned serpent puppet undulates over a dense and lively crowd. The stark, high-contrast lighting from a Norman 200B flash illuminates a wealth of candid human interactions within the frame: in the upper left, a man gazes down at a joint held in his hand, while in the lower left, a woman reacts with a mix of surprise and delight as the snake's tongue dangles just inches from her face. This black-and-white 35mm shot freezes the motion of the performers, including a puppeteer in the lower right sporting a quintessential eighties mullet, as they navigate the giant creature through the narrow Greenwich Village streets. The image provides a raw, atmospheric look at the era's festive chaos, where the boundary between the performers and the massive audience feels almost non-existent.