photo sharing and upload picture albums photo forums search pictures popular photos photography help login
Type your message and click Add Comment
It is best to login or register first but you may post as a guest.
Enter an optional name and contact email address. Name
Name Email
help private comment
Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Eighty-nine: A long weekend in the Big Easy > Maintenance, New Orleans, Louisiana, 2014
previous | next
02-FEB-2014

Maintenance, New Orleans, Louisiana, 2014

The front doors of restaurants get a lot of use, and acquire many fingerprints over the course of a day. They are cleaned over and over again, and in this image I abstract the person responsible to maintain the appearance of this particular door. By placing his face behind the door frame, and featuring only the two hands at work – one holding a bottle of window cleaner and the other a paper towel – I make this image into a universal symbol of man at work. I include the restaurant’s logo as useful context.

FujiFilm X-M1
1/250s f/6.4 at 181.9mm iso800 full exif

other sizes: small medium large original auto
share
Phil Douglis14-Oct-2014 21:14
The abstracted man's hand is poised near the water bottle's trigger, while the other hand scrubs a restaurant window. You see the image as "triggering" work, which is a valid interpretation, very close to my own intention, which as I noted, was to create a "universal symbol of a man at work." It would be sad, indeed, is someone were to view this image in the context of negative ethnic stereotypes. I'm sure you would agree.
Tim May14-Oct-2014 17:13
The logo appears on his shirt also - and for me there is another thing that comes to mind here - it is the gesture of the hand on the bottle - Too often our stereotype of men of color is of their hands on the trigger of a gun - here it is a similar gesture. Yet, in this case it is triggering work.
Type your message and click Add Comment
It is best to login or register first but you may post as a guest.
Enter an optional name and contact email address. Name
Name Email
help private comment