[The Guardian] The big picture: hope within reach in 1970s New York

The big picture: hope within reach in 1970s New York

Mark Cohen’s evocative shot of a child with some bubble gum machines is part of a series capturing the vibrant characters and street life of the Big Apple

When he was about 30, the celebrated American photographer Mark Cohen lived in a dorm at New York University while spending a month at the film school there. In breaks from classes, he would wander the streets of the city taking pictures. Nearly all those images were unprinted and until recently existed only as negatives. A new book, Tall Socks, collects that work for the first time.

This picture of a kid with his hand in the bubble gum machine is freighted with the weight of time and place of that backstory; those of us of a certain age will be able to recall the exact fairground feel and resistance of the handle that ejected the gum in its little plastic pod, as well as that eternal childish hope that someone might, this time, have left the prize – with its free-gift creepy-crawly – in the chute, waiting to be discovered.

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