Photo of the Week #236

March 13, 2023
Bruce Wrighton had a special eye for down-at-the-heels hangouts that operated in the blurry distinction between diners and taverns. The Waldorf Grill & Restaurant, formerly on Main Street in Johnson City, New York, was one such place. Wrighton used an 8×10 view camera exclusively in his work, a large camera that took him time to set up and adjust, which meant that he wasn’t quickly snapping pictures of scenes like this, but thoughtfully composing them within the frame, while absorbing the ambiance of the space. When describing this process he once said “It is a substantially different way of operating. It is a far more meditative way.” Vintage contact prints like this one capture the rich detail and deep color of Wrighton’s 8×10 inch negatives at actual size.

Walldorf is a small town in Germany, so it seems likely that the Waldorf Grill owner was of German descent, and that booths like this one hosted regulars who washed down platefuls of schnitzel with cold pilsner. Walldorf was the ancestral city of the wealthy German-American Astor family, which built and operated the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan. The Waldorf-Astoria’s reputation for luxury makes it amusingly improbable that it shared a namesake with this scruffy (yet festive) bar and grill, whose ramshackle charm was so beautifully captured by Bruce Wrighton.