At the 1950’s style, chromium-sheathed 11th Street Diner, on the corner of Washington Avenue in downtown Miami Beach, the short-order cook looks like Samuel L. Jackson would look, if he were playing a short-order cook in a 1950’s style, chromium-sheathed diner in downtown Miami Beach. Except the white’s of this cook’s eyes are permanently bloodshot and inflamed from the long hours spent working in the hot fat and steam-filled atmosphere of the diner’s kitchen. The 11th Street Diner is just around the corner from the Wolfsonian Foundation, the home of Miami Beach’s premier collection of art and artifacts celebrating the city’s Art Deco heritage of the 1920s through to the 1950s. On a slack Saturday lunchtime in April, there are still more people in the diner than there are in the museum. Perhaps the people here prefer to live out their heritage in realtime, rather than view it through the toughened glass of museum exhibit cases.

In Camera Lucida Roland Barthes writes that the essence or ‘noeme’ of photography is its ability yo captures ‘that-has-been’ – the brief instant in time, between here and infinity, when the camera lens snaps shut. Look at this photograph. Has the diner finished eating? There is still some sesame-seed bun on the plate, along with ketchup splattered fries. The angle of the fork suggests the diner has just paused to take this shot and will soon be returning to his meal. But this debate is academic because minutes later the meal is over. What we are seeing now is ancient history. The table has been cleared, the diner has left scene, the detritus has been trashed or recycled, and the plates long since washed, stacked and re-used by further generations of diners.

Out of sight of the camera, the short-order chef is speaking on his mobile phone, interceding on behalf of one of his customers, remonstrating with her boyfriend that he is not paying the mother of his child the respect she deserves. On the diner’s sound system American Woman by The Guess Who is playing.

(Miami Beach, 12:49pm, April 12, 2008, f 2.8 - 1/60 - ISO 100)