“Kibbitz & Nosh: When We All Met at Dubrow’s Cafeteria” with Marcia Bricker Halperin and Kevin Baker 

Seating is first come, first served and requires advanced registration.

On a winter’s day in the mid-1970s, the photographer Marcia Bricker Halperin sought warm refuge and, camera in hand, passed through the revolving doors of Dubrow’s Cafeteria, a restaurant-social club for a generation of New Yorkers on Kings Highway in Brooklyn. There, between the magical mirrored walls and steaming coffee urns, she found herself as if on a theater set, looking out at a tableau of faces. Enchanted, Halperin returned to Dubrow’s again and again to take photos and enjoy the space. 

Donald Margulies and Deborah Dash Moore’s essays illuminate and contextualize Halperin’s poignant photographs in Kibbitz & Nosh: When We All Met at Dubrow’s Cafeteria, taking us to  the days when she would order a coffee, converse with the denizens of Dubrow’s on Kings Highway and at its Manhattan location in the Garment District, and in that relaxed atmosphere execute candid photographs in keeping with the work of Vivian Maier and Robert Frank.  

Marcia Bricker Halperin will be joined by novelist Kevin Baker to discuss how these black-and-white images are a revealing return to New York City’s legendary cafeteria culture. A signing will follow, with books available for purchase. 

Marcia Bricker Halperin, a lifelong Brooklynite, has been photographing the character and landscape of New York City since the 1970s. She received a Master of Fine Arts from Brooklyn College and soon after had her first solo exhibition at the Midtown Y Gallery. In the late 1970s, she was active in the Photographers Forum, an organization that was a continuation of the 1940s Photo League, reflecting their humanistic and aesthetic concerns. From 1978 – 1980 Halperin was a part of the CETA Artist’s Project documentation team, a program akin to the WPA. Her assignments there included photographing Soviet refugees and their introduction to American culture in Brighton Beach, housing issues in Hell’s Kitchen, and Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ iconic conceptual project, Touch Sanitation. Her photography has been included in many group exhibitions, including the Brooklyn Museum and the International Center of Photography and in a recent solo exhibition at the Edward Hopper House Museum. Kibbitz & Nosh: When We All Met at Dubrow’s Cafeteria, her first book, was published this year.  

Kevin Baker is a novelist, historian, journalist, screenwriter, and playwright. Most recently, he wrote the story for the Ken Burns documentary, The U.S. and the Holocaust. The author or co-author of twelve books, his new work, The New York Game: Baseball and the Making of a New City, will be published by Knopf next March. A contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine, Baker has written for many major newspapers and magazines, in the United States and Europe, and has appeared in numerous television shows and documentaries about history and current affairs. Baker lives in Manhattan with his wife, the playwright Ellen Abrams. 

This program is made possible in part by support from the Battery Park City Authority.