"Immersed for a Decade Among Those He Portrayed"

"There are no illusions in these portraits. But there is a lot of warmth and the intimation of rapport, or at least the softening of suspicion brought on by a couple of rounds of bottom-shelf booze. In the end, though, the camera captures some alarming dissolutions.

"'You see how beat they are,' Sheldon Nadelman said of the patrons who managed to hike themselves up on the red and green bar stools, 'so you can imagine the ones that can't make it anymore.'

"Like the Greek, who drank Budweiser. Until he disappeared.

"'You're going to see all these people disappear from the street,' Mr. Nadelman says as the film opens. 'The street eats them alive.'"

In a 2014 New York Times article, David W. Dunlap discusses Sheldon Nadelman's 1970s street photography.