Village Pope

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

Captured on grainy, medium-contrast 35mm film between 1982 and 1986, this shot vibrates with the raw energy of the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade. A man dressed as a priest dominates the center of the frame, his spectacles and clerical mitre illuminated by a sharp, Norman 200B professional flash that makes his white vestments pop against the dark New York night. Behind him, the analog film's rich blacks and silver tones reveal a bustling street scene: a woman in a heavy winter coat, a figure whose head is completely wrapped in bandages with a shirt that reads BOO!, and a dense crowd of revelers pressing against police barricades. The gritty, street-style composition perfectly preserves a moment of the era's irreverent, DIY theatricality.