Mise En Place

I volunteer at a non-profit café—Postmark Café on 6^th street— in Park Slope, Brooklyn. The cafe is normally subdued, most people sitting and chat or work in silence or with headphones, music plays on the shops’ sound system.

At 11:40am every school day students from the local middle school in Park Slope, Brooklyn flood into the cafe. The café prepares for the children, by cooking a pot of Mac and Cheese and preparing sandwiches in a simplified version of the café’s everyday menu. The line often stretches out the door for about 20 minutes before the children return to school and peace is restored. Regulars are used to the sudden explosion of activity, but to a visitor the scene must feel quite intense. I wanted to record this event in a way that recorded the traffic of the lunch rush without recording the participants. I decided to shoot a static, locked off shot aim at the counter space where sandwiches are prepared, and set up microphones to record the sound of the event.