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First Edition Published March 2025
Limited to 150 numbered and signed copies
8” x 8” (20cm x 20cm)
64 pages, Paperback, Perfect-bound
Pages printed on Mohawk Superfine Eggshell White #100; Cover printed on #120 Crest Avalanche White on a Canon V700
Language: English
Printed in the USA
Praise for Walk-Ins Welcome
Between 1974 and 1977, Andrew Satter returned again and again to Russ’s Kitchenette, an old diner in East Cambridge where the morning’s first coffee and the afternoon’s last cigarette marked the rhythm of the day. The patrons were working people—men and women whose names were not written down, whose histories would not be archived. But here, in this twelve-by-thirty-six-foot space, they were recognized and remembered. Satter, a long-haired newcomer with a 35mm camera, worked quietly, in black and white, with an instinct for light and its temperaments. His photographs do not impose. They do not declare. They watch, and they listen. (from the Foreword)
Adam Giles Ryan—Curator, Center for Photography at Woodstock
Every photograph feels like a short story. Taken as a whole, it gains the power of a novel. A singular evocation of a mostly vanished time and way of life.
Dennis Lehane—Author of Mystic River and Small Mercies
This stunning collection of photographs captures the richness and nuance of a community and the lives that comprised the traditionally working-class neighborhood of East Cambridge. As diners continue to disappear from the urban landscape this book stands as a tribute to a unique moment in history and illuminates the everyday moments, personalities, and atmosphere that once thrived in these beloved establishments.
Viv Williams—Archivist, Cambridge Historical Commission
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Walk-Ins Welcome is Andrew Satter’s debut photo book. This collection of forty-one black & white images made between 1974–1977, captures many ordinary moments of the lives of a once vibrant working-class community in East Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Satter stumbled upon Russ’s Kitchenette Diner, an iconic 1930’s Worcester lunch car style diner by accident while studying at the ImageWorks Photography School in East Cambridge, Massachusetts. “It was 1974 outside on the cracked sidewalk but it was 1947 inside the diner. Laughter and the sound of Big Band Music were the soundtrack that drew me inside, and the smells of coffee, butter, bacon and cigarettes sealed the deal.”
Satter returned to the diner regularly and made his photographs with a Nikon and a Graflex Speed Graphic Camera and made all of the images with available light.
“Russ’s Diner was like Cheers but without alcohol and a decade before the series debuted on TV. It was a tight-knit community. I was a long-haired stranger with a camera and I didn’t have a Bostonian accent. I quickly realized I needed to earn the respect of Russ, the owner, Charlie, the cook, and Geri, the waitress.”
He intuitively took his time, asked for permission to take pictures, and often worked through the night developing film and printing images that he gave to the diner’s staff the next day. Soon, many of the regulars asked to have their photographs taken, too.
Satter moved to New York in 1977 to pursue a career as a filmmaker. After several near misses, he launched a startup, spent three years working for Ogilvy advertising, and ultimately became a successful executive coach. The images in this book, plus hundreds more, were rediscovered in an unmarked box in the artist’s basement and had been presumed lost nearly thirty-years ago. Walk-Ins Welcome captures a bygone era in America when blue-collar workers earned enough to raise a family, had jobs for life, and a large cup of coffee to go cost thirty-two cents.