This video features the Kodachrome Photographs by the late Murray Cooper, loaned to Edgemere Archive through the Library of Barbara Cooper. The beginning montage of black and white photographs are by an unknown photographer. The iconic black & white aerial photo is of the boardwalk at Edgemere on July 4, 1957 by Margaret Bourke-White.
The subject of the photos are of life at the Bungalow Colony at Beach 38th Street and a wonderful portrait of life on the Boardwalk and on the beach between 1957 and 1961. Through his photographs, he weaves us a world of families leaving the hot city, mostly from the Bronx, to have a wonderful life during the summer at the bungalow colony, from their evening gatherings, to all the families sitting on the porches talking, to the utterly amazing boardwalk photographs. He captures his beloved Pearl, his family and extended family and other returning families who came to the same Bungalow Colony every summer.
As I mentioned before on my blog, Beach 38th Street holds a very special place to me personally, and one of the things that was lost to me were photographs of the street and the house. Through an unbelievable chain of events all of us will get to enjoy these amazing photographs of a time and place and a way of life that has slipped away. With my world being all on Beach 38th Street with my grandparents owning and running one of the big summer homes, in many of his photographs he captures the home. It is the large brown house right off the Boardwalk. These are the first pictures I’ve seen of the house since I was a boy.
Murray Cooper considered himself an amateur photographer, using a professional quality 35 mm camera and Kodachrome film. But the quality of the pictures speak otherwise. His photographs in the end will be compared with the great photographs of New York. Murray never got to see where his photographs will get to travel in today’s world. The internet will take these pictures everywhere.
I wish to Thank Barbara Cooper for sharing her father’s photographs with us.
I dedicate this video to Murray and Pearl Cooper.
