Thread by @DrAlakbarov

Thread. The photography of Melissa Breyer

With a childhood dream mapped out to be a painter, Breyer would toy with different mediums of artistic expression in a bid to quench the thirst for communicating the vision of the world around her before settling with a camera in hand.

While the desire to transmit her work through a lens has grown organically, Breyer has managed to carve out her own world within a vast field of stylistic approaches and, in doing so, has successfully conveyed an alternative take on street photography.

Melissa Breyer moved to New York to become a painter and ended up becoming a waitress, first at a pasta place in Greenwich Village, then at a bar and grill in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

She enjoyed the social aspect of the work, but especially the quiet moments, when she could daydream “about the books I was reading or conversations I wanted to have or shoes I would like,” she said.

As Breyer made the transition to photographer, writer and website editor, she found herself drawn to the stories playing out behind the windows of the restaurants she passed.

The waitresses, especially, caught her attention. When they weren’t reciting the nightly specials or balancing dinner for four on one arm, what were they thinking?

The photos here, taken from either side of the restaurant window, ask this question without trying to answer it.

“They all have lives,” Breyer said.

“They have a place where they live and have histories. When they’re paused in reverie, that’s the entry point for where the stories begin. I make up narratives for them sometimes. Maybe one of them is practicing to be a Rockette."

"New York is a city of eight and a half million separate films. Each person is a film. I say, ‘Here’s the star of a story."

If the waitresses shown are like their photographer, one thing they were not thinking about was how to tell the big tippers from the cheapskates, Breyer said.