Waitress

A portrait from 1989 in Malvito, Italy.

Glass polisher

One evening at our favourite (and almost only) restaurant, we noticed a new waitress. Her duties included polishing glasses which she did with the best glass polisher, a good linen napkin. Her actions were swift and thorough; her concentration unwavering.
"Do you ever break one?" (The glasses are particularly fine at this place.)
"Sometimes," she answered shyly. "Then it's usually a Champagne glass, the tall, thin ones." We returned at 4.30 a few weeks later and I photographed her during preparations for dinner.

Waitress with embroidered flower

She has a rare look, but it was also the coral necklace and embroidered flower that made this young woman special to photograph. This was a quiet, unfamiliar moment at Provini, not often does a waitress there have the time to sit down. I noticed her crossed hands in repose and her facing out from the bar. Fortified by coffee and prosciutto panini I got to my feet and took the picture.

Off duty waitress

I was lucky. In a normally busy place there was nobody except her, the proprietor and one customer. She sat on the stool, tucked her leg under her and looked at the lens. My Rolleiflex, God how I miss it! But I'm addicted now, foully addicted to the damn digital life.

Balance

She was coming straight at me with what looked like an impossible load. It was the angle of her body and the level tray that got me. I said please stop just there. She did - without a waver.

Waitress with armful of glasses

Botanica has a new manager, an Englishman, originally from the Islands. Along with him, two new waitresses of great skill and courtesy. Braced with a shared Hemingway (that as yet, unbeatable cocktail, the daiquiri), we drove home to Garrison listening to "A Most Wanted Man" by John le Carré. The journey has never gone quicker. The book is a perfectly aimed swipe at the complicity of all the governments fighting the war on terror; riveting characters and suspense.

Roberta's best

There is as much to say about Roberta's where this girl works as there is to say about her. Roberta's, for me, has the best pizza in Brooklyn (crisp crust and simple fillings), the best prices, the most pleasant staff and the atmosphere of a place where you feel you will be missing something if you did not go there regularly. The people who run it grow food for the restaurant in greenhouses on their roof. They also have a radio station.

This girl is Bushwick exotic: tattoos, beads, short skirts, lots of color and friendliness, plus much knowledge of where good food can be found in Brooklyn. We missed her the other night when we went. She liked the doorway and lent against it in this languid way without any prompting from me.

Botanica, early evening

I was watching the tangled limbs and slumped bodies in the foreground. I did not notice the waitress in the middle distance until I downloaded the picture. Here was the "happy accident". We see the poise and balance needed to be quick but un-rushed, never spilling a cocktail filled to the brim, never banging a plate down on the table or bumping into somebody's chair. Always having time to answer a customer but knowing that another customer is waiting for their food or drink. Knowing on a busy night you can't dally. At the same time, you must be unfailingly pleasant and polite. And to complete the "happy accident", I had, by mistake, set the camera to automatically focus in the middle of the frame, thereby having the waitress in focus.

Rainbow at Botanica

Sometimes there are important characteristics in people that you cannot show in a portrait. There is something missing from this photograph, and it is that you cannot see that she moves with extreme grace and lightness.

We had landed up at this delightful place by chance. We were talking to a young woman on the sidewalk outside who was applying gesso to some canvasses, and the proprietor of the bar joined us and asked us in. He was a perfect host and the sandwich was delicious.

He told us that he bought the three story brick building twelve years ago and that it was a burnt out wreck. "I restored it myself."

"Are you an architect?"

"No, an engineer."

Uptown Health, 125th Street

This girl works at the counter of Uptown Health, a vegetarian restaurant and juice bar on 125th Street in New York City. We asked if I could photograph her. No, she said, she was too busy, but her mother, who is the manager, came to the rescue and stood in for her while I did the picture.

The photograph is lit by a skylight above her and a window behind me which filled the shadows.

Waitress in diner

This person is a waitress in the diner in Beacon, New York. She looks more like a customer about to give up waiting for her friend, but is not disgruntled enough to prevent good feelings towards the camera from coming through. There also is no sign of impatience in her look, as though she really had no more time for this nonsense as there were customers waiting for her to take their order. This was, of course, because she actually preferred being in front of the camera than dealing with customers.