Photos: Brighton Beach, Back In The 1980s

Photographer Abraham Ravett put together a new book filled with haunting black and white photos of Brighton Beach in the early to mid-80s. Gothamist clued us in to Ravett’s new work consisting of large format “8×10” of the time he spent in Brighton Beach as a teenager.

Gothamist described the history of Ravett’s family and how they came to Brighton Beach:

Abraham and his family moved to Brooklyn in 1955, after living in a tent at a refugee camp in Israel. At first they lived in a tenement apartment in Brownsville, and eventually (around 1960) moved to Brighton Beach—to “a block of new, twenty-two story, Le Corbusier knock offs, complete with handball courts and ocean views. Trump Village it was called. A clean, bright place with no past.”

Ravett himself went into detail on the style and nature of his Brighton Beach photography on his website:

Inspired by the work of Emmet Gowen, Eugene Atget, Chauncey Hare, and Walker Evans among others, the photographs combine an observational approach to the urban landscape with intimate portraits of family, neighbors, and people encountered during my daily excursions along the Brighton Beach boardwalk and nearby shopping district along Brighton Beach Ave. Initially seen as a record of a neighborhood in transition whereby an influx of Russian, Jewish immigrants contributed to the cultural diversity of the environment, thirty years later, these photographs have also become a visual embrace of the landscape that shaped my youth.

Not limiting himself to photography, Ravett also picked up a film video camera and captured some wonderful beautiful short films of Coney Island and Brighton Beach. You can watch previews of these clips by clicking here and here.

Interesting stuff, indeed.