Photographer Sarah Stolfa shot the series The Regulars while working as a bartender for nine years at McGlinchey's, an old tavern in downtown Philadelphia. Her portraits are both stark and resonant, tender and alienating, and they capture something deeply specific to the place yet relevant to watering holes everywhere. The series launched her career as an artist, winning awards and appearing in the pages of the New York Times Magazine , the New Yorker, and several gallery shows.
The Regulars will be a visual and literary ode to the theme of bars and bar-going. The gallery of bar patrons will be anchored by two pieces of writing: one giving a critical perspective on the photographs from a prominent art historian; the other addressing the drinking everyman (and woman) who features in all of Stolfa's photographs, by a writer in the vein of Moehringer, Richard Ford, or Pete Hamill.
