Book Review

Candy Store: A Photographer’s Gorgeous Glimpse Behind the Counter of an Iconic East Village Bodega

By Phyllis Eckhaus

Photographer Whitney Browne describes her book Candy Store as an homage to the disappearing New York City owner-operated storefront, but her artful and idiosyncratic little volume is so much weirder and more wonderful than that. Instead, it’s a testament to the East Village as a welcoming haven for everyone, freaks and outsiders included. And it’s also a stunning example of how freedom and tolerance can spur an artist’s vision, here displayed across 90 pages of lush color photography and compelling text.

For years, Browne found refuge and comfort behind the counter at Ray’s Candy Store, the 24/7 egg cream and fried-Oreo purveyor across the street from Tompkins Square Park, on the corner of Avenue A and East 7th Street. Browne would come in to work the graveyard shift for free, refusing owner Ray Alvarez’s offers of pay for fear of sullying her experience.

She began to bring her Hasselblad camera with her to work and, from 2012 to 2017, slowly produced the highly personal collection of photographs that ultimately became Candy Store. Recently at Tompkins Square Library, Browne gave a talk—and showed images that did and didn’t make it into her book. Left out of the book was a full portrait of a patron in a Magritte-inspired suit and tie of vivid blue sky and white cumulus clouds. Kept in the book was a headless portrait of the same cloud-suit guy, the image extending from the top of his necktie to just below his crotch—a shot that foregrounds and celebrates the distinctive aesthetic choices he and Browne each made.

Browne credits Ray and his candy store for framing her vision and pulling her through. “I liked being of service to Ray, and knew that being in Ray’s company was helping me out, too,” she writes. “My early-hour volunteerism became an act of self-preservation. It brought me out of my head and into someone else’s hard-earned world….At a time when I felt like there was nowhere to go, he demonstrated the potential of radical imagination in the face of dead ends.”

Indeed, in Browne’s telling, Ray himself is arguably a work of art, a willful creation of “radical imagination.” Browne concludes her book with an interview recounting Ray’s remarkable story. A poetry-loving former Iranian sailor who jumped ship to swim to the Virginia shore, Asghar Ghahraman became Ray Alvarez when he was kindly gifted someone else’s driver’s license. Arriving in New York City nearly penniless, he eventually saved enough to buy his eponymous East Village storefront. In his interview Ray quotes The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam in Farsi and proclaims “I love America!” Now in his nineties, Ray still keeps his candy store open 24/7. Dare I suggest he is not your typical store owner?

Yes, owner-operated storefronts are special and should be cherished and saved. But Candy Store, the book, and Ray’s Candy Store, the bodega, also speak to the power of perseverance and “radical imagination.” They embody and transmogrify the joy, heart, and perversity of the East Village.

Though I have far too many books, I felt compelled to purchase this one, and it continues to obsess me. Profits after expenses will support Ray. Candy Store would make a great holiday gift for your favorite bohemian, and is available locally from Village Works, Mast Books, the Strand, and Book Club Bar.