Good News!

I have been awarded grant funding from the New York State Council on the Arts and the Department of Cultural Affairs through the Brooklyn Arts Council Community Arts Regrant Program for a documentary film on cafeterias.  To some, the mere mention of Dubrow's, Garfield, Famous, Hoffman's, etc. creates an outpouring of nostalgia for the days when Irish bars, Italian social clubs and Jewish cafeterias were the social centers of NYC neighborhoods. The film will include my own photographs, video shot in cafeterias and contemporary interviews. 

Afterimage article on Click!

Another nice comment appeared in the publication of the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, 

Afterimage vol. 36, no. 2 (Sept/Oct 2008): 29-30

J. MacNeill Miller says:

"Nevertheless, "Click!" contained some very good images. The unanimous favorite across all experience levels was Marcia Bricker Halperin's Dubrow's Cafeteria, a black-and-white image of a sagacious old woman looking at the street from behind a plate glass window dominated by the reflection of an old-fashioned taxicab. Mingling the transparencies and reflections of plate glass windows is a trick dating to Eugene Atget's day, but Halperin pulls it off in an image worthy of Andre Kertesz.

Click! Book Cover

My photo was chosen for the cover of the book!

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/click/book.php

Good Press on Click!

Citings recently in the New York Times:

Marcia Bricker Halperin's richly complicated black-and-white picture of people in a cafeteria with reflections from the front window glass layered over them has the aura of mid-20th-century Modernist photography.

and the Washington Post:

The crowd and the experts also agreed on the best image: a 1979 image of an elderly woman seated in a diner with the city street reflected in the window as she looks out.

and the New York Sun:

The show has one memorable photograph, "Dubrow's Cafeteria", taken by Marcia Bricker Halperin (it made the top 5%). Shot from the street, "Dubrow's Cafeteria," a frank view of a Brooklyn diner window, is a layered, watery montage of reflections - passersby, automobiles, signage, a Checker cab - anchored by a pensive old woman who, sitting alone in a booth by the window, clutching her check, stares directly at the camera.

and Slate:

Take a look at this picture. It's a view of the front window of the legendary--and now long-gone--Dubrow's Cafeteria on King's Highway in Brooklyn, N.Y., shot from the street by Marcia Bricker Halperin in 1979. The reflection on the window--cars, signs, a checker cab--seem to mingle with the patrons inside the cafeteria. A couple of guys kibitz in the back; an old woman seated by the window clutches her check and stares quizzically out at the camera. It's a beguilingly complex image in the tradition of classic black-and-white street photography.

Like the picture? Join the crowd. It was the top choice (from among 389 images) of 3,344 people who participated in the Brooklyn Museum's odd experiment in curatorial crowd-sourcing, "Click! A Crowd-Curated Exhibition". 

Recent Exhibition

Click! exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum