As I scroll through instagram I often see photos of Coney Island. To be clear, I would never get myself into any of these rides, but the structures themselves, the colors, the sligthly nostalic and kind of creepy feeling and mostly the sadness and tragic stories hidden behind the artificial facade of joy, fascinates me and always captures my attention.
close enough
I have never visited Coney Island myself, but there is a place in Austria, which is “close enough”: The “Wiener Prater”.
I hear a few guests screaming in a rollercoaster and mechanical monster voices in this colorful space, but it feels like a crumbling illusion. If you take a closer look, you see the rust on the metal bolts, the garbage under the constructions, you notice that all of this is slowly rotting and nobody tries to stop the decay. I stand in front of an empty ride on a bright and sunny day, as the guy in the booth is screaming the same old slogans as if he was cheering up a crowd waiting to buy a ticket, but nobody is there.
It feels like this whole place is a remnand of a long forgotten time. You can see how this space is giving its best to stay, but it is slowly loosing this battle. There was a time, when this was peak entertainment, but it has lost his purpose for most of us. Everything that is left is a melancholic memory of something that won’t come back - made of steel.
equipment
All of these photos were taken using a Yashica T4 on Kodak Gold 200 film.
