Supper at the Long Table

On the last Thursday of every month, the street closes. Sixty chairs, four trestle tables, one enormous pot of something, and a rota for the washing up. The supper began as a way to feed the neighbours during a hard winter; it has become the neighbourhood's calendar. Photographing a communal meal is the opposite of studio work. The light is terrible, the movement is constant, and the best frames happen when you are not looking. The photographs that worked are the ones where the camera simply stayed open and the table did the rest. You cannot direct a long table. You can only join it — and take a place that does not block the serving.