Biography

Harvey Stein b. 1941 is an American photographer, teacher, curator, and author based in New York City. His images have been published in the New Yorker, TIME, Life, Esquire, Smithsonian, The New York Times, Reader’s Digest, Psychology Today, Harpers, ARTnews, American Artist, People, and Der Spiegel, among many others.

 

Coney Island 40 Years tells the tale of world-renowned photographer Harvey Stein’s 40-year romance with “America’s playground.” Stein’s timeless black-and-white images, taken from the 1970s through 2010, capture that quintessential weird and wonderful quality central to the mythos of this iconic Brooklyn beachfront. Consistently shot through the decades with a 21 mm lens, this series of photographs evokes a sense of nostalgia, fantasy and adventure.

 

“Entering Coney Island is like stepping into another culture,” Stein writes. “Coney Island is an American icon celebrated worldwide, a fantasy land of the past with an irrepressible optimism about its future. There isn’t anywhere else like it.”

 

Stein’s photographs have been widely exhibited in the United States and Europe — over 81 one-person and 160 group shows to date. His photographs can be found in more than 55 permanent collections, including the George Eastman House, Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Brooklyn Museum, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the International Center of Photography, the Denver Museum of Art, the Musée de la Photographie in Charleroi and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and, among others, the corporate collections of Johnson & Johnson, Hewlett Packard, LaSalle Bank, Barclays Bank, and Credit Suisse.

 

Harvey Stein frequently leads workshops and lectures worldwide. He has taught at the International Center of Photography since the 1970s.

 

His book Coney Island 40 Years was published in 2011 by Schiffer Publishing.

RECENT EXHIBITIONS

2019    Mexico Between Life and Death, Dallas Center for Photography (Opens Nov. 2019), Dallas TX

2018    TPS 26: The Center for Contemporary Arts, Abilene TX

2017   Coney Island 40 Years, Krasl Art Center, St. Joseph, Michigan
            Shifting Perspectives: Photographs of Brooklyn's Waterfront, Brooklyn Historical Society, NYC, NY

2016   Coney Island: Visions of an American Dreamland, 1861-2008, Brooklyn Museum, NY 

            Coney Island: Visions of an American Dreamland, 1861-2008, McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX 

 

SELECT COLLECTIONS

The George Eastman Museum

Bibliotheque Nationale de France 

The Art Institute of Chicago

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston 

The Brooklyn Museum of Art 

The New Orleans Museum of Art

The International Center of Photography

The New York Historical Society and Museum,

The Museum of the City of New York,

The Brooklyn Historical Society.

The Denver Museum of Art

The Carnegie Museum of Art

The Portland Museum of Art (OR)

Museet for Fotokunst (Odense, Denmark) 

Musee De La Photographie (Charleroi, Belguim)

The Portland Museum of Art (ME)

The Corcoran Gallery of Art

The American Museum of Natural History

The Santa Barbara Museum of Art

The Addison Gallery of American Art

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