In putting together this project, I felt I had too few photos; as a result, I was trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. I also thought the subject of the photos was a restaurant offering sidewalk takeout during the pandemic.
I later learned that viewers had a different take. The subject was not the restaurant, but a few customers and their tentative first steps towards normalcy on a fine spring day, after a long, state-mandated lockdown. Just look at their body language, one told me, and the air of expectancy that pervades the photos.
Restaurants have been struggling to survive, perhaps no more than other businesses, but they occupy a special place in our hearts, and their struggles are plain for all to see. Gustazo, a popular Cuban restaurant in Waltham, had just moved into a larger, newly decorated quarters when the pandemic hit. Under the present bizarre circumstances, they are stoutly trying to make the best use they can of their new location.