Photograph: © Aaron Rose/Museum of the City of New York
Photograph: © Aaron Rose/Museum of the City of New York

31 photos of Coney Island in the sweltering, skin-baring summers of the early '60s

Aaron Rose’s “In a World of Their Own,” a new exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York, shows uninhibited sun-worshippers at the iconic Brooklyn beach

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Though it may not feel like it on this rainy, cloudy day, summer is coming—soon enough, New Yorkers will be able to get gloriously sunburnt on one of the city's many beaches. After all, it's what we've always done, as Aaron Rose's intimate photos of Coney Island in the early '60s show us. On view at "In a World of Their Own," an exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York that opened today, the shots show a diverse array of beachgoers sprawled—sometimes sexily, at other times grotesquely—on their towels by the shore.

RECOMMENDED: Full guide to Coney Island in NY

Rose was one of the first shutterbugs to use C-print paper and chromogenic processing; fascinated by the summer skin tones, his work intimately captures uninhibited New Yorkers soaking in the sun, kissing and baring a lot of skin (though not as much as today's swimwear shows). Click through the slide show above to bring some sunlight into your day.

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