Marcia Bricker Halperin
Marcia Bricker Halperin (b. 1951) is a photographer who has specialized in photographing Brooklyn and Brooklynites.[1]
Career
Halperin has photographed the Brooklyn landscape, as well as other parts of New York City, since the 1970s.[2] She was inspired by street photographers like Helen Levitt.[3] As part of the 1973 Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, she produced multiple photograph series, including Hell’s Kitchen in the 1970s (in coordination with Housing Conservation Coordinators ) and a series in Brighton Beach focused on the interactions between the established Jewish community and newer Soviet Jewish immigrants.[3] David Gonzalez wrote for The New York Times that "Her record of New York’s long-gone cafeterias, rendered in black and white, have graceful architecture, dazzling or moody lighting and more than a few characters, like Gene Palma, the slick-haired street drummer and Gene Krupa maven (who was also featured in “Taxi Driver”).[4]
Her 2023 photo book Kibbitz & Nosh: When We All Met at Dubrow's Cafeteria[5] included many of the above mentioned photos and documents the lives of mainly elderly Jews who frequented the aforementioned cafeteria, which was on Kings Highway and East 16 Street in Brooklyn.[6] Julia Gergely for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency underlines the importance of Bricker Halperin's preserving the memory of a vanished world, a world of secular Jewish culture.[7] Bricker Halperin began frequenting Dubrow’s in 1975, and was a regular visitor until its closure a decade later.[8] The book includes essays about Dubrow's written by several people, including the playwright Donald Margulies and historian Deborah Dash Moore.[9] In 2023, photographs from the book were exhibited at the Edward Hopper House in Nyack, NY.[10]
Halperin also had a career as a high school photography and special education teacher in New York City. During her 35 years as a teacher, her photography largely fell by the wayside. However, she noted in 2023, "the day after I retired, I took out my negatives and my photography stuff and bought a scanner and all kinds of printers and things," and returned to photography.[8]
Personal life
Halperin is a lifelong resident of Brooklyn.[2] As a child, she attended a "Conservadox" synagogue, and had "the kind of family where my mother kept a kosher kitchen at home, but on Sunday nights we’d go out to the Chinese restaurant".[8] She graduated from Brooklyn College, where she earned a Master of Fine Arts.[3][11]
References
- ↑ "Marcia Bricker Halperin". Jewish Book Council.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 "Marcia Bricker Halperin: When We All Met at Dubrow's Cafeteria". sca-roadside.org. July 16, 2025.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Beling, Sarah (2022-04-19). "Marcia Photographed 1970s Hell's Kitchen — One Picture of a Housing Violation and One Portrait of a Person at a Time". W42ST. Retrieved 2026-01-22.
- ↑ David Gonzalez. In New York’s Cafeterias, a Cup of Coffee and Community. The New York Times. May 3, 2017. [1]
- ↑ Bricker Halperin, Marcia (2023). Kibbitz and Nosh: When We All Met at Dubrow's Cafeteria. Cornell University Press. ISBN 9781501766510. Search this book on
- ↑ ""Kibbitz & Nosh: When We All Met at Dubrow's Cafeteria" with Marcia Bricker Halperin and Kevin Baker". Museum of Jewish Heritage. November 2023.
- ↑ Julia Gergely. A new photo book celebrates the very Jewish cafeteria culture of a vanished New York. New York Jewish Week. Jewish Telegraphic Agency. May 11, 2023. [2]
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Gergely, Julia (2023-05-11). "A new photo book celebrates the very Jewish cafeteria culture of a vanished New York". Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Retrieved 2026-01-22.
- ↑ Ciurej, Barbara (2023-07-04). "Marcia Bricker Halperin: Kibbitz & Nosh: When We All Met at Dubrow's Cafeteria". LENSCRATCH. Retrieved 2026-01-22.
- ↑ Kibbitz & Nosh: New York City's Vanished Cafeterias - photographs by Marcia Bricker Halperin. The Edward Hopper House, Museum, & Study Center. [3]
- ↑ Halperin, Marcia Bricker (2023-04-27). "When we all met at Dubrow's Cafeteria". The Forward. Retrieved 2026-01-22.
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- 1951 births
- 20th-century American educators
- 20th-century American Jews
- 20th-century American photographers
- 20th-century American women educators
- 20th-century American women photographers
- 21st-century American Jews
- 21st-century American photographers
- 21st-century American women photographers
- Brooklyn College alumni
- Jewish American photographers
- Photographers from Brooklyn
