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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Twenty Four: The Workplace -- essence of a culture > Window cleaner, New York City, New York, 2010
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10-JUL-2010

Window cleaner, New York City, New York, 2010

I built this image of a man cleaning a window in a New York City apartment building door around a series of frames within frames. The bars offer an initial frame, then the door itself, and finally the white decoration around it. The nearby window in a brick wall echoes the other rectangles here. I used my burst shooting mode, and chose the moment when he peered through the glass with one eye from behind his white cloth. The work seems to be routine – he probably cleans fingerprints off this piece of glass every day. We get a sense of that repetition here – he seems to know the job by heart and can probably do it in his sleep. The repeating frames within frames here intensify that feeling for us.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1
1/200s f/4.5 at 78.0mm iso100 full exif

other sizes: small medium large original auto
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Phil Douglis11-Aug-2010 22:37
Thanks for turning the image around and giving it fresh context, Tim. Windows are indeed lenses, from which people can look out at the passing parade. He keeps this one clean for those wish to do so.
Tim May11-Aug-2010 19:00
Our street photography deals with looking through our lens at the world -here you have placed that action on its head in that the subject seems to be cleaning the lens to get a better look back at us.
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